Robinson, Randall 1942(?)–

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Randall Robinson 1942(?)–

Lobbyist, foreign policy strategist, human rights activist

Worked to Educate Public on Global Injustice

Randall Robinson is the executive director of TransAfrica, Inc., a Washington-based lobbying organization devoted to the fight for human rights for people of color throughout the world. Since its inception in 1977, TransAfrica has been at the forefront of the crusade to shape U.S. foreign policy in Africa and the Caribbean Basin.

According to Robinson, it is ignorance of geopolitics that so often explains America’s regrettable silence on the human rights violations of tyrannical regimes that operate all over the globe—and, in some cases, only hundreds of miles beyond the U.S. border. In addition, he charges that racism is at the root of an American immigration policy that rejected the political asylum claims of Haitian refugees while welcoming non-blacks from other comers of the world onto American shores. In order to fight these twin foes of ignorance and racism, Robinson’s TransAfrica has relied on both backroom political pressure and high-profile public education campaigns.

Robinson’s participation in a quiet act of civil disobedience in 1984 set in motion a radical change in American policy toward South Africa’s discriminatory apartheid regime. Along with black political activists Mary Frances Berry and Walter Fauntroy, he fueled a yearlong protest of the South African embassy in Washington, D.C. So successful was he in creating the atmosphere for political change in South Africa, so influential was his voice in the chorus to end that country’s institutionalized racism, that U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, as quoted in the New York Times, described the lobbyist as “the 101st senator in all our debates on apartheid.”

The man who turned a two-person organization in a basement office into a 15,000-member national lobby that ignited the “Free South Africa Movement” was exposed to racism in his own country long before he cast his eyes on injustices around the world. Born in Richmond, Virginia, Robinson—the younger brother of the late Max Robinson, the nation’s first African American network news anchor—was educated in segregated public schools and graduated from the formerly all-black Virginia Union University in 1967. “Early on in life,” he told People magazine, “I was taught that an unprincipled life is not worth living.”

Robinson first sat next to white students at Harvard University Law School, where he earned his degree in 1970. While many of his classmates chose to follow the

At a Glance…

Born c. 1942 in Richmond, VA; son of Maxie Cleveland (a high school history teacher) and Doris (a teacher and homemaker) Robinson; married Brenda Randolph (a librarian; divorced); married second wife, Hazel (a foreign policy adviser), c. 1987; children: (first marriage) Anikie, Jabari; (second marriage) Khalea. Education: Virginia Union University, B.A., 1967; law degree from Harvard University Law School, 1970.

Civil rights attorney, Boston, 1971-75; aide to U.S. representative William Clay, 1975, and to U.S. representative Charles C. Diggs, Jr., 1976; executive director, TransAfrica, Inc., 1977—; established TransAfrica Forum, 1981. Military service: Served in the U.S. Army, mid-1960s.

Selected awards: Ford fellowship; Martin Luther King, Jr., Public Service Award from Ebony magazine.

Addresses: Office —TransAfrica, Inc., 545 Eighth St. SE, Washington, DC 20003.

lucrative path of corporate law, Robinson traveled to Tanzania on a Ford fellowship and then returned to Boston to work as a civil rights attorney for a legal aid project. He went to Washington in 1975 as an aide to Missouri congressman William Clay, and a year later, while an administrative assistant to Michigan democratic representative Charles C. Diggs, Jr., took part in a congressional delegation’s trip to South Africa.

The dehumanizing consequences of South African apartheid—a political system that denied the country’s black majority its most basic civil rights—became frighteningly clear to Robinson. In one case, a liberal South African businessman told Diggs that granting voting power to blacks would be akin to giving a gun to a five-year-old. In an interview with Ebony, Robinson stated that South African blacks were obliged to endure “a hate-inducing system that forces one to choose between an expression of self-dignity that puts your life at risk or a turning of that emotion inside that makes you a stooped human being.” The idea for TransAfrica was born in 1976 during the annual session of the Congressional Black Caucus. Representative Diggs and former congressman and civil rights crusader Andrew Young convened a special meeting to discuss the policy of then-President Gerald Ford’s administration in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Guerrillas in the south-central African country, calling for an end to white rule of the 98 percent black populace, were engaged in deadly fighting with government troops.

In articulating their opposition to Ford’s policy of tolerance toward the white rulers, the meeting attendees broached an issue of much larger scope. They concluded that there was a deplorable scarcity of people of color in high-level international affairs positions and that a private advocacy organization was needed to counter the neglect of African and Caribbean needs in U.S. foreign-policy-making circles. TransAfrica, the first organization of its kind, was incorporated in 1977; Robinson—with his educational and work background and his political astuteness—was chosen as its executive director.

Worked to Educate Public on Global Injustice

In order for the lobbying group to enjoy influence with Washington politicians, Robinson knew he needed to assemble a constituency of Americans who had overcome their ignorance of African and Caribbean issues and would provide support, in money and in their own activism, for the causes that TransAfrica would champion. In 1981 TransAfrica Forum, the research and educational affiliate of TransAfrica, was established to collect and disseminate information to help plan U.S. foreign policy in black areas of the world.

With educational programs for minorities, foreign policy conferences, and numerous publications, TransAfrica Forum undertakes the frequently challenging role of shedding light on political injustices that have not attracted sustained television news coverage. This task, Robinson has said, is complicated by the fact that most Americans of all colors care less about foreign than domestic policy, less about the cruel and barbarous conditions in which millions of non-American blacks are forced to live than about the standards of living for people within the United States.

But as Robinson told Black Enterprise, “You don’t change policy under the presumption that you must have a majority opinion on your side. In the final analysis, you need to organize a critical mass of people, which is not necessarily the majority of the black community. The issue is how well organized we are at a certain level and how vigorously we can apply pressure on the administration and the Congress to create the foreign policy we want.”

TransAfrica emerged as a potent national force in 1984, when apartheid, the official, segregationist policy of South Africa that was instituted in 1948, first began to generate heated public debate and outrage on the worldwide political scene. After a meeting with South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Robinson, former U.S. civil rights commissioner Mary Frances Berry, and former Washington, D.C. delegate Walter Fauntroy refused to leave the South African embassy in Washington until the process to dismantle apartheid had begun and Nelson Mandela, the long-jailed president of the African National Congress (ANC), was released.

This 1960s-style sit-in and the subsequent arrest of Robinson and the others prompted 53 consecutive weeks of daily protests in Washington and at South African consulates in 23 cities across the United States, as well as symbolic vigils at embassies around the world. At the American protests, more than 4,000 people were arrested, including 23 members of Congress, mayors, civil rights activists, and celebrities. Because of these demonstrations and the famous names associated with them, American scrutiny of South African political injustice reached an all-time high, and, consequently, TransAfrica’s fight for political action enjoyed the fuel of public support.

Lobbied for Sanctions Against Apartheid

Robinson and others called on Congress to enact strict economic sanctions against South Africa, claiming the suspension of U.S. trade and loans to that country would expedite the fracturing of apartheid. However, then-President Ronald Reagan continued to embrace his “constructive engagement” policy, which argued that sanctions would hurt black South African workers more than their white employers and that political reform in South Africa would more likely result from a conciliatory rather than antagonistic approach. But TransAfrica and other groups had momentum on their side. In 1986 the U.S. Senate overrode a Reagan veto to pass a series of sweeping sanctions against South Africa.

This legislation, known as the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, resulted in a ban on the importation of the gold Krugerrand into the United States; a ban on the transfer of nuclear materials and technology to South Africa; a ban on the sale of computers and computer technology to South African military, police, and other agencies enforcing apartheid; and a cut-off in U.S. loans, except those providing education, housing, or health facilities on a nondiscriminatory basis. John S. DeMott wrote in Time, “U.S. Senators and Representatives who voted for sanctions against apartheid enthusiastically acknowledge that Robinson’s cool, calm competence helped rally black and white Americans against apartheid.”

Though academics and policy analysts debated the effectiveness of the sanctions, subsequent events in South Africa indicated that financial leverage, in combination with continued public pressure, contributed to the reversal of apartheid. After the release of Mandela in 1990 and his triumphant world tour, Robinson urged anti-apartheid activists not to allow the euphoria to quiet their calls for the structural dismantling of the regime. When U.S. president George Bush’s administration relaxed the sanctions in 1991, responding to reform measures implemented by South African president F. W. de Klerk, Robinson argued that blacks still had no real economic or political power in that country, and that the incentive for de Klerk to continue toward a democratic government had been unwisely lifted.

Robinson maintained his belief that the main pillars of apartheid were likely to remain in place. Responding to a 1992 referendum—in which white South Africans overwhelmingly endorsed de Klerk’s increasingly dramatic reforms—Robinson was quoted as saying in the Washington Post: “It’s important not to celebrate prematurely, but having said that, this is a watershed event in South African history. The citizens of that country were faced with a clear choice: reform that will hopefully lead to a democratic South Africa, or chaos which would likely lead to a civil war. But no one is at the finish line yet.”

South Africa held its first free and fair multiracial elections in the spring of 1994. During this historic event, South African people of color finally savored the taste of freedom. Voters waited in snakelike lines for hours— some elderly black citizens actually had to be carried to the polls—to cast their ballots for the very first time in a presidential election. ANC leader Nelson Mandela emerged as the country’s clear choice for president, garnering 62.65 percent of the votes and 252 of the National Parliament’s 400 seats. Still, during the transition from apartheid to democratic rule in South Africa, Robinson urged the United States to assist with peacekeeping measures.

According to Emerge, “TransAfrica lost its villain with the death of apartheid in South Africa. Today, the nation is headed down the rocky road toward a multiracial democracy, and apartheid, at least the legal version, has exited. That exit has left TransAfrica without a focal point…. Now, TransAfrica is at the starting gate again, faced with [the challenge of building] a constituency for a progressive policy toward Africa and the Caribbean.”

Cast Spotlight on Haiti

The early 1990s saw Robinson lobbying for U.S. aid to wartorn Somalia and for the establishment of a humane and just policy toward Haitian refugees. Robinson continues to speak out on global issues affecting people of color, educating Americans on the economic ills of many African countries and urging Congress to be as generous with aid to emerging African democracies as it is to former Communist nations in Europe. Asked about the future lobbying direction of TransAfrica, Robinson told Black Enterprise: “We have to acquire all the muscle we need from the horn of Africa to West Africa to the smaller nations of the Eastern Caribbean to blacks in Brazil. We have to make sure that no policy is made that affects our people that we have not effectively weighed.”

In April of 1994, Robinson planned a hunger strike and a demonstration on the White House grounds to protest U.S. president Bill Clinton’s policy on Haiti. Newsweek quoted Robinson as saying that he was “prepared to die” in the fight for the Haitian boat people seeking political asylum in the United States. Beginning April 12, he refused all nourishment except for juice and water and remained in the basement of TransAfrica’s Washington headquarters waiting for some action from the U.S. government.

Although an embargo on fuel and arms had been initiated against Haiti in October of 1993, it wasn’t until seven months later that a near-total trade embargo was instituted by the United Nations, effectively banning all international trade except for food and medicine. Such sanctions were established in the face of increased political violence in Haiti—violence that stemmed directly from the 1991 ousting of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the vehement anti-democracy tactics of the nation’s subsequent military regime.

Wracked by poverty and fearing for their lives under Haiti’s oppressive military rule, many Haitians risked almost certain death in their attempts to escape their homeland. Boatloads of Haitian people seeking refuge on U.S. shores were returned to Haiti by the Coast Guard; passengers were then placed in police custody. As reported in Jet magazine, Robinson deemed this a “profoundly racist” policy that made “President Clinton complicitous in the behavior of Haitian military leaders as they murder anyone who favors democracy in that country.”

But on May 8, 1994, Clinton agreed to allow asylum hearings at sea to Haitian refugees, deciding on a case-by-case basis whether to grant each one entry into the United States. According to the New York Times, escalating violence in Haiti throughout the spring of 1994 “made the new asylum policy necessary.” The Times also noted that administration officials were considering the use of American military force in Haiti to restore democracy, quoting President Clinton as saying, “The United States has clear interests at stake in ending this crisis.”

Although Clinton claimed that he would not allow Robinson’s actions to influence the administration’s decisions on Haitian immigration, many political observers felt that the 27-day-long fast, which landed Robinson in the hospital briefly for dehydration by the third week, played a key role in the policy change. Clearly, Robinson’s passion, commitment, and political savvy—combined with financial support from corporate giants like Coca-Cola, Nike, Reebok, and Anheuser-Busch—make him and TransAfrica indisputable forces in the continued fight for racial justice worldwide.