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Michael Snow: This is a state and local government archives interview with
Reverend James Robinson, the pastor emeritus of Bidwell Presbyterian
Church, a member and chair of the Citizens Clergy Coordinating Committee,
a, uh, member of the Pittsburgh School Board, former candidate for City
Council and director of the Manchester Youth Development Center. The
interviewee--interviewer is Michael Snow of the Archive Service Center at
the University of Pittsburgh. It is March 11th, 2002. I'll just--Could you
start by stating your full name and date and place of birth?
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James Robinson: James J. Robinson. Born Connellsville, Pennsylvania.
November the 14th, 1927.
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Snow: 1927. Robinson: Mm-hm. Snow: Let me play that back. And from the
biography that you gave me last time, your parents were Mabel and Charles
Franklin Robinson. Robinson: Right. Snow: And what was your mother's maiden
name?
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Robinson: Uh, Trent. Snow: Trent. Robinson: Mabel Arth. A- R- T- H- Trent.
T-R-E- N- T.
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Snow: Do you remember when and where they were born? About when and where?
Robinson: She was.
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Robinson: My mother died when she was 90. I have her date at home.
Exactly. I'd have to count back. I have exactly the dates. Oh, boy. Hm. Can
we jump over that for-- Snow: Yes. Robinson: Let me jump over-- Snow:
[talking both at once] Easily. Robinson: I have to think back on that one.
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Snow: And what--what types of schools did you attend in Connellsville?
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Robinson: Grade school in Connellsville. Uh, those days it was Crawford
Elementary from one through six. Then--uh--the--it didn't have middle
school. It was Cameron Junior High School. Seventh and eighth grade. Then
Connellsville High School. Nine through 12 and graduated in 1945.
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Snow: How were ethnic and race relations in Connellsville when you were
growing up there?
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Robinson: I wasn't aware. Snow: You weren't? Robinson: No, because there
were only a town of 12,000. I wouldn't imagine if you stretched the point
in Connellsville--if you stretched it, you might have 500,uh, in those
days, colored, who were colored--Negro. Now Black. Now African-American.
Snow: Right. Robinson: Uh, I'd say you would stretch it, but right outside
Connellsville, in those days, coke was the predominant industry there.
Coke. Coke ovens. Anchor Hocking came along a little later. But, uh, race
relations in retrospect--in reflection was, you know, your parents told you
pretty much where you could go, where you were allowed to be. You know, you
sit upstairs in a theater, you accepted that. You couldn't go in the
restaurants, you accepted that. You knew that even though all of my friends
were mostly white, all the way from--ufrom elementary school through high
school, that's just--I kept my place. I just knew that and understood it.
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Snow: Did your parents try and shield you from that-- Robinson:
[simultaneous talking] Yeah. Snow: --By telling you that, oh, you wouldn't
want to sit downstairs or that sort of thing?
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Robinson: Oh. Pretty much. They didn't want me to get hurt. Snow: Okay.
Robinson: Not saying it as much as just I knew it. I was aware of it. And
at times I was told, you know, if you went into a theatre and by accident,
the person at the movie theater--youngster who I don't know what you call
him, the guy with the flashlight-- Snow: [simultaneous talking] Right.
Robinson: --Who took you to your seat? The usher. He would remind you that
if I went in with a white friend, he says, you know, you know you have to
sit upstairs. And these are guys that I went to high school with who were
ushers. They told me that. And they didn't think really anything of it.
They just accepted it. It's just. Their mother and father told them and I
guess their mother and father told them. Historically, that's segregation.
I just accepted it and, uh, you know, I just kept my place. And so I didn't
know any better. Snow: Wow.
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Snow: My students at Pitt, especially the white students, have no concept
that that occurred in the North. Do you find that African American young
people--realize that?
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Robinson: [simultaneous talking] I think all of us realize that. When
the--it was like even the only place to swim was in the--was in the river.
And they even had a place called Chocolate Beach for Blacks. Mill Dam was a
place where--where the young--young men we swam. No. Can you hold off,
please? [Unidentified speaker]: [unintelligible] Robinson: Where the--Where
we swam together, bare naked, you know, after the ball games and things
like that. Snow: Okay. Robinson: But then the white kids swam on another
part of the town, a place called Flat Rock. Snow: Huh. Robinson: Even the
river-- Snow: [simultaneous talking] Was segregated-- Robinson: --Was
segregated, [laughs] uh, in Connellsville. And that didn't occur to me that
anything was wrong with that. We all accepted it. Just the way it was. And
I didn't realize this until, oh, way late that we can talk about when I
kind of came to my senses, you know, when I really began to--when I began
to really realize when the civil rights struggle came. Then I began to
think back. Then the anger came. Snow: No doubt. Robinson: And then I got
so angry. I was so mad. But then I came to live with myself after a while
after that and kind of got a balance. But that's the way Connellsville was.
But it was no different, uh, I don't imagine. But a small town in western
Pennsylvania, it was, uh, it was--it was tough. You know, we had to do
things like run a race. The last one down's a nigger baby.
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Robinson: What the heck if we run a race? And I didn't think anything was
wrong with that because I was never last. I was never the nigger baby. But,
uh--And the kids I don't think they--I don't think the young white
youngsters thought anything of it either. They just accepted it, and so did
I. Just a matter of fact, you know, I live with that. I didn't really--Uh,
I didn't really think there was anything wrong with that. I was just a kid.
You know, you're talking eight, nine, ten, 11 years old. And I graduated
from--from--from--from, uh, Connellsville High School at 17 years old, then
went to Pitt at that age. But, uh, during all those years, the block where
I lived growing up in Connellsville, it was all white. Snow: Oh, was it?
Robinson: It was all white. Irish youngsters, Italian youngsters. We all
played together, ate together. You know, that is ate on [laughs] stuff that
you got from the store. Snow: Okay. Robinson: But, uh, but that, uh--
That's what it was. I can remember in high school, uh, my mother worked at
the YMCA as a--as a chambermaid with her sister. And I was a good athlete
in high school. I won a gold watch for being one of the best athletes in 25
years. I won letters and--four in track, three in football and three in
basketball. But I could not wait on my mother in the cafeteria.
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Robinson: Until she got finished from work. I could not stay--I could
not--Even though I was that popular of an athlete. I was not allowed to sit
on a stool in the cafeteria and wait on her until she got off from work. I
had to wait outside. I accepted that. An interesting thing was there was a
young fella on the basketball team named Herbie Kurtz. His father owned The
Wonder Bar. It was a restaurant tavern. The basketball team--After we were
on the bus, we'd play local teams, we'd come back and we would eat there. I
was with the basketball team and we would eat there after the game was
over. Snow: Mm-hm. Robinson: But when I would go back to see Herbie during
the week, they would not let me in. That's the way it was. I accepted that.
I mean, that was just--We all did, all--all--all of us. We talked about it,
but nobody ever, ever--You know, in those days, did anything about it. We
used to joke about it. I didn't joke about it because I never--I was
puzzled about it. I was hurt at times, being told, you know, that you
cannot, you know, sit upstairs. You had to sit up your friends when you
went into a movie, 2 or 3 of you, and they went one way and you went
another way. I can remember, uh, later on during the civil rights struggle,
I began to reflect, just like I'm talking to you, to newspaper people.
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Robinson: Well, I was an old--I'm an old-- I'm a man. I'm 30 some years
then. And I began to talk about these things. And they printed it. And
the--and the newspaper went to Connellsville, Latrobe and Greensburg. It
was a newspaper. And I had teachers who called me up angry. Why would you
say that? But then there were others who said, I didn't understand it and
didn't know it. One man even called and cried. He was so hurt, he says, I
just didn't realize. So you had that kind of a feeling. But even in, uh,
talking about these things, when I was older and understanding what had
happened to me. But I wasn't deep into the civil rights movement. I hadn't
done--I hadn't been really involved. I was just talking to a sports writer
who was asking me what was going on. And I was just telling him, like I'm
talking to you now. What it was like growing up in Connellsville? He was
just asking me questions like you're asking me why--how was it growing up
and I was telling him this. He looked at me like, I can't believe this. And
he was young, like you, much younger than I was. Snow: Mm. Robinson: So
that's, uh, that's, you know, that's the early stages in life, you know,
growing up in a small town like that.
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Snow: Wow, that sounds really tough in many ways. Robinson: Well-- Snow: I
guess young people are resilient.
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Robinson: Uh, it wasn't tough because I didn't know any better. Snow:
True. Robinson: I just knew my place. In the South, and I knew nothing
about the South, and of course, I knew nothing at all about anything in
the--I don't know--what went on in the South. And--and Black youngsters
would look at the South like, Boy, that's terrible. You can't walk on the
sidewalk. But we never even stopped to think that--that, you know, that our
situation was just as bad. Only, uh, we would not be physically hurt or
arrested or hung or many for reasons as what was going on in the South. Uh,
sort of a pseudo-racial thing, you know? It was like that.
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Snow: You mentioned that your mother was a chambermaid at the Y. Robinson:
Mm-hm. Snow: What was your father's occupation?
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Robinson: My father in those days--He--he kind of floated. He, uh, he
didn't--My grandfather, I lived with my mother and father and grandmother
and grandfather were all in the same house. Uh. My grandfather worked on
the WPA and my grandmother worked at a bank as an elevator operator. Snow:
Oh, yes? Robinson: Mm-hm. My grandmother. Mh, my mother for a long time
just stayed at home and kept house. My dad was a floater. He had no job.
For a long time, he didn't work. My grandfather was the--He--he was, uh--
My mother was very young when I was born. I think she was about 18 years
old. My father might have been around 19 years old. Uh, but, uh, my
grandfather was the one. Who was like my father. My grandmother was like my
mother. Snow: [unintelligible] Robinson: Yeah. And, uh, in fact, I called
my mother by her first name and my father by his first name and called my
grandmother Mama and my grandfather Daddy. So, uh, you know, that's pretty
much growing up the way it was, you know, in--in one little house there.
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Snow: Elsewhere during the Great Depression, the relief agencies in the
WPA were awfully quick to purge-- Robinson: Mm-hm. Snow: --African
Americans off the rolls. Robinson: Mm-hm. Snow: How precarious was your
grandfather's situation with his WPA job?
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Robinson: He was a curb. He would work making curbs. He--he had a little
better job. He is a big man. He was a good guy. He was, uh-- You had to
forgive me, too, because a lot of--I'm trying to back up and find history
because I don't know where they came from. Snow: Oh, no. Robinson: No, I
really don't. I didn't-- The history, uh-- The history was mixed. My--my
mother's father. My mother's father was white. My mother's mother, she was
mixed. My mother's mother was mixed. My father's father, from what I can
understand, was born in North Carolina. His mother, as I can remember, had
to be a slave. I can remember her with that bandana on her head, but nobody
ever said anything to me about that, and I never asked. But my mother's
people came from Smithton, PA, and I imagine there was a small group of
mixed--mixture there. I don't totally understand, but-- Growing up, I can
remember my uncle passing for white. And I can remember all of her brothers
and sisters had blonde hair and blue eyes. Snow: Did they really? Robinson:
Yeah. Some of them were brown haired, blue eyed. My mother was very, very
fair. But then my father on that side, they were very dark. And color in
those days. Color--and still today in mixed--and you can go back to the
plantations--There was a real thing of Blacks. Uh, it used to be a thing if
you used to have an expression. If you're if you're yellow, you're mellow.
If you're brown, stick a--stick around. If you're Black, get back. Now,
that was done within the Black community and the colored community, as they
called it, and light skinned. Well, you know, the history on the plantation
of the light skinned, dark skinned, the light skinned, the mulattoes.
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Snow: With the light skinned being in the house.
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Robinson: Yeah. They would be in the house. And a lot of the mulatto kids
went to college. Mixed kids went to college while the dark skinned guys got
them meager jobs on the plantation. Well, within the Black community,
growing up in Connellsville and I guess across the country, light
was--was--was different. You were--you were a little different than
somebody who was dark. Even today, that's kind of coming back again. It's
not very--it's not a good thing. So that's the whole pattern. It was almost
like we were against ourselves. We were--we were not in any way
understanding what was being done to us. There was no such thing as a
leader, a king or anybody. There were--there were, you know, there were
Langston Hughes and Frederick Douglasses and people like that around. But I
heard nothing about this. I didn't get this in high school. Nobody ever
taught me anything like this. All of my teachers were white. And I didn't
have any Black teachers in Co-- in elementary through high school. Never.
Nobody ever told me about slavery and history of Blacks, any achievers. I
never knew anything like that. All the heroes that I knew were all white.
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Snow: Do you remember from those classes negative images?
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Robinson: Oh, absolutely. Yes. I can remember a teacher who would go
around the room and talk about where you were born, this and that, and
they'd come to me and say, and they didn't realize my background when they
started. [Laughs] They didn't know that, you know, even within my family,
there was, uh, mixed. They said, well, well, Jim, you know, you're, you
know, colored, you know, come out of slavery and stuff like that. Then we'd
kind of gloss over that. But the Italian kids, they'd repeat where they
came from. The Irish kids would talk about where they came from. But when
it came down to 1 or 2 of us, I didn't know anything. I didn't know where I
came. I had no--I couldn't say I came from Africa. I couldn't say that I
came from Ireland. I couldn't say that I came from Italy. I could have,
like Alex Haley said, you know, he was trying to find out his roots. He
found out where he was from Africa. Then he had to go to Ireland. Snow: Did
he? Robinson: Yeah, to find out. Only he had. And I would have to have done
the same thing. You know, miscegenation does some funny things with
American Blacks. Plays a-- It paints a pretty mixed picture-- Snow:
[simultaneous talking] Yes. Robinson: --For us. But I --I didn't--I
just--Well, you know, when you're put in a situation like that and you're a
kid, what--what--what do you know? You don't know anything. I didn't
realize. I didn't know who I was. I don't know, you know-- I didn't--I just
didn't know who I was. I had, you know, in retrospect, in reflection, I had
no sense of identity. Not at all. But I didn't realize that as a kid, you
know, I just didn't realize it. I just--And I was happy. I was a very happy
kid growing up. Stupid. Ignorant is a better word. Ignorant about anything,
about myself, about my history. And, uh, I'm trying to correct that now.
Going back even now.
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Snow: And what was the role of religion in your family?
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Robinson: Uh, they were all--My mother--My mother went to a Baptist
church. Her mother played a piano in Uniontown where she grew up. Uh, she
grew up--My--my grandmother, my mother, mother and even my mother went to.
A Baptist church. Mount--Oh, can't think of it--in Uniontown. That's where
my mother grew up. She was born in Smithton, but grew up in Uniontown. Uh,
so they were strong members in this Baptist church in Uniontown,
Pennsylvania. That's where my mother grew up. And all of the family--my
grandmother played for the choir. My grandfather went there. They all went
there and they had an orchestra--I can remember--in that church and all of
her brothers and--well, some of them played in that church orchestra. Snow:
Oh, wow. Robinson: Yeah. My uncle was one of the finest jazz piano players.
He played twin pianos at Merkurs Music Bar when I was, I think, a freshman
in Pitt with Erroll Garner, the jazz pianist. Erroll is one great jazz
pianist. They played the Merkurs Music Bar. He was good. He could play. So
I grew up listening to my grandmother in a church play that music. I
listened to my uncle play a lot of jazz. And to this day the piano is my
favourite instrument. I took lessons, but then I got too big and ended up
going into sports. I didn't really take to the piano, but--but I grew up
listening to gospel. Church music and jazz. Snow: And jazz? Robinson: And
jazz. Listening very strongly. I can talk a lot about my feelings, how I
reflect, when I was a minister in the church about jazz and gospel and
stuff like that. But that's that's a whole nother story. Snow: Right.
Robinson: But, uh, I love jazz to this day. I knew all the great piano
players, Art Tatum, you know, Teddy Wilson, Erroll Garner, Earl
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Robinson: Father Hines. You know, I listened to all of them. And to this
day, Oscar Peterson is one of my favorite pianists. Uh--But jazz is--I love
jazz. Uh, when I was a minister in a church towards my latter years, the
music teacher here began to look at a different gospel music that I didn't
particularly care for. But he looked at contemporary gospel, which is a
thin line because a guy named Tommy Dorsey brought gospel music in, which
overlaps into a lot of jazz and that, uh-- And so I began to listen to the
wine, the commission's younger gospel players, a lot of jazz sounds and the
Winans and people like that. So as--as our piano player, our leader here,
the young man who teaches music today in the--in the charter school, he
began to incorporate that into the music in the church. And the young
people began to pick it up. Snow: Did they? Robinson: And I began to like
it. But it was a particular kind of contemporary jazz. I mean, uh, gospel.
And it had a lot of jazz sounds in it because Tommy Dorsey, who was the
innovator, who was the--who--what word can I use? Innovator? Is that the
right word? Snow: Yes. Robinson: Of gospel music, incorporated a lot of
jazz into gospel music. He did that. And so then I begin to hear it in the
church. Because of my background, I liked it. Snow: Right. Robinson: And
Leonard was a piano player and he could play. He was a jazz piano player,
too. But when he came to the church, he changed up and made it more
spiritual. So he's still here. He's still here teaching in the charter
school. Snow: Wow. Robinson: And then he was at the church for 21 years
while I was there out of my 35.
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Snow: That's really good. Did that help bring in a lot of the younger
people?
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Robinson: Yes, it did. The young people in that choir, they sang some
really good stuff. It wasn't old dead beat. It was a real good sound. And
he could arrange. He took a lot of the old church hymns and--and arranged
them differently. He took a song like How Wide Is God's Mercy? But when he
played it, when he arranged it, it was altogether different than what the
hymn book-- Snow: Oh, good. Robinson: --played. And it was--he could do
that. And the--Precious Lord Take My Hand. You know, you play that, it
sounded like a drag. But when he played it and when he arranged it, it was
prettier. That was Martin Luther King's favorite song. Snow: Was it?
Robinson: Yeah, and mine too. But, you know, like. But there's a thin line
between a person who may not be a Christian and a person who's spiritual.
Uh. Oscar Peterson--I can't find a, uh-- Played a tape. Played a record,
one of those big 78s, when he was in Japan when Mandela was in prison. And
he--He dedicated it to him and he called the Hymn of a Fallen Warrior. It
is the prettiest song. It sounds like a spiritual.
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Robinson: I told Leonard when I die, play that if you're still around.
There was a man who died--I had funerals. I didn't particularly-- Didn't
have to be a member of Bidwell Church when he died in Manchester. A lot of
people I just buried and married, you know, just because I had funerals in
church. There was a man who died, who was a father of some of the members,
uh, in the church. Snow: Okay. Robinson: He was not spiritual. He was just
a street guy, like my dad. His name was Bull. Can't give his last name. So
he says, Look, when I die, you know what--what I want. Leonard Johnson took
Coltrane's Goodbye--John Coltrane. He improvised it and made it sound just
like a spiritual. And when people left the funeral, they said that was one
of the prettiest hymns I've ever heard in my life. If they'd have known,
that was Coltrane's Goodbye--John Coltrane--So that's the way we did.
That's the way we did. He took--you know, you can take songs, you can--you
can--You can reproduce them. You can--He did it and did it, it feels like--
