Robinson, Rev. James J., March 11, 2002, tape 2, side 2

James Robinson: Said, don't go down that way. They're waiting there to hurt you. So we turn around and start running and this kid knew where to go and we ran. I ain't seen nobody chasing us. We just ran. Got back to the place.

Michael Snow: To the Freedom House.

Robinson: To the Freedom House.

Snow: And did you stay and organize or did you leave after that point?

Robinson: Uh, we left right after that. The other guys were released. I stayed there a couple more days. We got in our cars and came back. Drove back the same way with Pennsylvania license.

Snow: Were you followed much?

Robinson: I don't know. Nobody followed us. We got in there and got out of there. That's the craziest--you know, I think of that--That's just--Mm. I think that was the same route that Cheney and Goodwin and guys took. It had to be. That's the only way you can get in that place. There's only one way to get in and get out of that place. And we had to come in Greenwood that way from Tennessee and to--and to Mississippi.

Snow: You'd think--Well, I guess I'm being naive myself. You'd think after all the media focus that had been on Greenwood after the deaths and the discovery of the bodies of those three organizers from Freedom Summer-- Robinson: Mm. Snow: --they would have been less obvious about their--tactics.

Robinson: [simultaneous talking] Well, you got to understand that Hoover and the FBI and these people weren't altogether all together. You're finding out more and more that it wasn't all--right. There was a lot of FBI people who did not see what King was talking about or what--what was being done or the way that it was being done. You're finding a lot of things out now. Uh, legislation was not totally intact. You know, the whole idea of the right to vote and the whole idea of interstate--The whole idea of the laws that would make everything within the interstate being accessible, from hotels to--to eating places. All those laws, I can't think of the name, but that wasn't all inttact. Then, you know, it became a law. And people in the beginning, in the South and other places, knew that they weren't--they didn't want to do it. They just felt that the law and--and--and suits and paying money and then legislation, you know, legislation made them do it. It wasn't from the heart. It took a little while for generations-- Snow: Right. Robinson: --of young people come along who didn't know about all that stuff. You know, he had different kids coming along, who didn't go along with their mother and father's mess. They had a different opinion about these things. And then colleges were opening up and--and--You know, there was a lot of things that happened after that. And today, even today, with all of the-- still the playing field isn't level. But a kid today can get--you know, he can go to college and be-- What he--whatever, whichever way he--as far as his dreams will take him. That doesn't mean he's not going to face a lot of opposition in places, in the workplace. But he can be a lawyer or a doctor, or whatever he wants to be. It's different. His dreams, you know, you can be pretty much what you want to be today. Now, there's a lot--I'm not saying that--Get --Don't get me wrong, it's still--the playing field isn't level. Snow: Certainly. Robinson: But--but it's such a different day for young Black kids.

Snow: And how did that experience down in Greenwood change the way you looked at your activism and your civil rights?

Robinson: Made it--made all the stuff that I really--about the way that I saw my ministry, it changed that more than anything. That's how when I got to Alex Haley and saw that, it got me back to Africa. You know, it's difficult for a guy who's been raised-- here, for me to think that I can go to Africa and live, no way in the world I can do that. I can identify with it, know the history of it. But the Greenwood, Mississippi, experience made me look at the way that I dealt with my ministry in Pittsburgh. It made me feel stronger about the church going outside the stained glass windows. I never looked at it quite that way. It made me believe that the church, that the Christian church had to--What I feel--Look at the historical Jesus in the Bible, the New Testament as I saw him, feeding the hungry, dealing with the oppressed. It made me look at that just like Orr said it was. It made me look at the institutional church as institutions singing and praying and all like that, that I had to really bring some of what I believe from the inside to the outside. Theologically. Snow: Yes. Robinson: Greenwood made me do it like that. And of course, then when I looked at King, that got me to Selma, Alabama.

Robinson: After Greenwood, I saw summer. Then I was really into it. Then I saw the church involved in all this stuff. See, before I didn't see the church involved in it. Now I see the church involved in it. Had to get involved in it as a--as a church. Then I began to read, uh, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Begin to read, began to look at Malcolm. I began to look at all that. But mainly what I saw was I began to get introduced and looked at Dr. Martin Luther King differently as a minister. What my role would be. Before I kind of just didn't quite see it as clear. Greenwood--Greenwood got me--got me hooked up that the church--and--and the street were not to be separated. It was all one and the same--The community. Of course, then when I went to Africa, I really did see the extension of the family. I saw the church as an extension of--of--being an extension to the community. Just like the Africans saw the nephews and the uncles and all of the cousins and all of that, they never disassociated themselves. Family. They were always--no matter where they went, they were all family. I never saw that before. But Greenwood got me--got me there.

Snow: Could you give an example of--of how you put this into practice?

Robinson: Well, what we did is--the first thing we did was, we set up, we began to set up--We bought the property down here. The--The--The gymnasium. The plumbing warehouse. We began to say that kids can't read. We began to say that there's a way that the church ought to be able to deal with social issues. We went to the community and we asked them. We didn't come in and tell them what we wanted to do. We asked them what was needed. Snow: Oh, wow. Robinson: That was one of the things. We set up a restaurant. Uh. We began to look at ways that we could better help people with kids who had seeing problems, eyeglasses. We began to hook up to other areas that could help people get jobs. Just--the church moved outside of it, outside of the prayer meetings and the Sunday service. We had to reflect on a daily basis with other people outside the congregation like they were our--part of the family, of the church. I began to have funerals for people who weren't members, who couldn't afford certain things. I began to have weddings for people who weren't members of the congregation. We set up a nursery school, a little small nursery school. A lot of times church people don't want those people outside walking on your carpet like it's their carpet. I'm saying that the church has an ownership in us, even though they're not members. That's what--that's the way I went at it.

Snow: Did that start to fill the pews? Robinson: No. Snow: It didn't.

Robinson: No. No, no. Church--people who go to church a lot of times, they want to be entertained. Church--Christian church isn't growing all that great. What they want to do is go to the best place where they can get the best deal. Oftentimes they want a pastor who's dynamic, who can have the biggest smoke cloud, who can have the best rhetoric. They don't want to go to some little church up the way like where I go has 40 members with a man who's helping people with houses. Taking 'em to the doctors, lives in the community. They don't go to move to Squirrel Hill--I mean, Fox Chapel. They live in the neighborhood. They work in the neighborhood. They identify with the neighborhood. You got to have an identity with the very people that you serve. You can't come in on Sunday morning, preach a sermon and leave. There's got to--the people that we live with around here are our friends. A lot of people criticize us for saying that you don't have the top administrator. You've got too much of the bottom people at the very bottom, and not enough people at the top. Most of the people that we have hired here are mostly neighborhood people, except for the teachers. These are my friends. I don't know if this is helping you out here by saying what I got from Greenwood, but this is-- Snow: Right. Robinson: This is the way that I see it. I don't live--I live a block away. But I know too many of my friends--I have no--I have no bad criticism. They moved to North Hills. They live the Fox Chapel. How can you do that? Their kids go to private schools.

Snow: And they've taken their dollars and their brains out--

Robinson: They're taking their brains, anything out. Yet they come in on Sundays and they entertain people. The big churches, the big mega church-- You've got to have--you got to have smoke. You got to have a thing going. You got to have a TV thing, ministry on TV thing. I mean, man, to keep the institution going, you got to be--you got to have showtime.

Snow: Hm. That makes sense to me.

Robinson: You got to have showtime. You can't have--you can't-- Snow: Right. Robinson: You're not going to have a big congregation by just sitting around talking about, you're going to have a food cupboard or help people that are oppressed or go to the jails. When you can't get a lawyer, you know, you can't do that. I mean, it's just--So that's a different kind of a ministry. I go to meetings, man, I'm like a dinosaur. When I tell these young people, man, you can't--You--Look, it's wonderful to keep the institution alive. But what about the kid down the street who's killing other kids? I see a kid down the street. I don't want to talk to a kid out here on the street because he's gotten shot two times and I don't want him--Let's go around the corner and talk because a guy might drive by. I don't want to get shot. Snow: Right. Robinson: This is what I see. Now I don't know if this is helping you, but I grew into this, and Greenwood was just another stepping stone to tell me that the church has to be more-- You know, you say, why am I down here in Greenwood, Mississippi? Well, I'm there because people are oppressed and they can't vote. Well, then I say, Well, that's going on in Pittsburgh. Snow: Okay.

Snow: Did your Greenwood days also-- Was that part of your reason for running for city council? Robinson: Oh, that was before.

Robinson: That was long before. Snow: Oh, was it? Robinson: Oh, yeah. No, that was nothing to do with Greenwood. That was long before Greenwood.

Snow: I thought you ran in 1967.

Robinson: Mm.

Robinson: Yeah. Let me get it straight. I don't--

Snow: Yeah, that's what I have written down-- Robinson: [simultaneous talking] Is that-- I think-- Snow: It's from a press article.

Robinson: I don't think so. I think--I think city--It might have been--You're right. That might have been later. It might have been later. Snow: Okay. Robinson: It might-- you-- Well, it might have been, but I saw theologically I got involved more across the board with a lot of things outside the congregation. Yeah, it might have been. You're right, the school board, I did-- I know the school board, that made me do a lot of things. Snow: Did it? Robinson: Yeah. It took me outside the institution. I'm a little--

Snow: Well, the dates are-- Robinson: Yeah. Snow: It's okay that you're-- Robinson: [simultaneous talking] Yeah. Snow: --people a lot of times-- [unintelligible]

Robinson: [simultaneous talking] But I did--But I did--I did a lot of things after I came back from Greenwood. I put in my thesis, when I came back, I wasn't the same. But during the slum things and all like that, I had--it was different, I--organization was that. You know, it was all that, but I never put it together in with--Greenwood just made me-- Well, first of all, it made me put my faith in God a whole lot stronger. God, I got out of that thing-- Oh, boy. But it made me look at the church differently. Those dates on it, you know, sometimes I have to kind of-- Get my--

Snow: Well, 37, 35 years later, the mind does change where dates go. [Robinson laughs] That's constant with everything.

Robinson: But I did a lot of things after I came back from Greenwood. Yes, I got involved in a lot of things.

Snow: Do you remember what you were running on in terms of city council and what really got you involved in doing it?

Robinson: Danny Berger, a lawyer, and Joe Burke was a professor at Duquesne. Uh, we ran on a Berger Burke and Robinson ticket. Snow: Okay. Robinson: And I ran because, you know-- I really kind of got drug into that thing. I wasn't too enthusiastic about that. I did it.

Robinson: But I was--

Robinson: I don't know why I did that. I--I don't know. I can't give you a good, clear definition about why I did that. Wanted to change politics. And Danny talked me into it. I kind of--But almost won.

Snow: Right, I had that. You came in fifth when you only have to come in fourth to be on city council.

Robinson: I almost won. I said, boy, if I don't want-- boy, I really didn't want to be a politician. School board was different. Even Jake Mullins [ph] twisted my arm on that one. And I ran--And, you know, then I had to runoff on the woman that did the, you know, the--the so-called lost ballot box. They had to have a recount. And I won. I lost, then they had a recount and I won. I was on there for worst four years of my life. Lord have mercy.

Snow: What makes you say in particular that they were the worst?

Robinson: [simultaneous talking] Are you kidding? The school board--Oh, man. The school board is rough. And then they were trying to desegregate these schools, you know, when I was on there, you know, place these kids and busing them. And--Oh, man, I got in there just in time for that. People running down there with the American flag. They had to have all those meetings, separate meetings, you know. Taking white youngsters out of white neighborhoods and putting them into Black schools--Oh, boy. Whew. That was something. I'm tired of running my mouth here. Snow: Okay. Robinson: Whoo!

Snow: Need to stop? Robinson: Huh? Snow: Do you need to stop?

Robinson: Yeah. I don't know if I'm putting all this stuff in order, I'm talking so much.

Snow: It's fine. It doesn't have to be in order.

Robinson: Oh. Oh, Lord.