Randall Robinson

Randall Robinson helped turn South Africa's Washington embassy into a focus of American opposition to apartheid. On November 21, 1984, the TransAfrica director joined Walter Fauntroy and Mary Frances Berry in refusing to leave the embassy after a meeting about South African repression. Their arrest began a sustained campaign of demonstrations demanding a stronger American response to apartheid. ¹

Robinson grew up in segregated Richmond, served in the U.S. Army, and studied sociology at Virginia Union University before graduating from Harvard Law School in 1970. During law school, he helped establish the Southern Africa Relief Fund and worked in Tanzania. Through TransAfrica, he organized advocacy directed at American policy toward Africa and the Caribbean. ²

His later work joined public campaigning to teaching. From 2008 to 2016, he taught law and international affairs at Penn State, where he helped develop the televised program World on Trial to examine states' compliance with human rights commitments. He died in St. Kitts in 2023. ²