Randall Robinson was a prominent anti-apartheid activist who founded the advocacy organization TransAfrica.
- Died: March 24, 2023 (Who else died on March 24?)
- Details of death: Died at a St. Kitts hospital of aspiration pneumonia at the age of 81.
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Activism and reparations advocacy
After growing up in poverty, Robinson earned a basketball scholarship to Norfolk State University before being drafted into the U.S. Army. He received a law degree from Harvard Law School and became a passionate civil rights lawyer focused on U.S. foreign policy toward nations with civil rights concerns such as South Africa and Haiti. As part of his advocacy, Robinson founded TransAfrica, a nonprofit organization working to influence foreign policy via outreach and education. His anti-apartheid activism proved effective, including sit-ins at the South African embassy that called U.S. attention to the government’s oppression of Black South Africans. The pressure resulting from U.S. economic sanctions helped push the South African government to end apartheid. Robinson also embarked on a 27-day hunger strike as part of a successful campaign for President Bill Clinton to allow Haitian refugees into the U.S.
Robinson’s push for reparations for Black Americans, including the publication of his book “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” received less public and political support. Eventually he became disillusioned by the ongoing struggle for racial equity and left the U.S. with his family to settle on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts, where he lived his last two decades of life.
Robinson on leaving the U.S.
“I was really worn down by an American society that is racist, smugly blind to it, and hugely self-satisfied. I wanted to live in a place where that wasn’t always a distorting weight. Black people in America have to, for their own protection, develop a defense mechanism, and I just grew terribly tired of it. When you sustain that kind of affront, and sustain it and sustain it and sustain it, something happens to you.” —from a 2005 interview for the Progressive
Tributes to Randall Robinson
Full obituary: The New York Times
