Robinson, Rev. James J., April 3, 2002, tape 2, side 1

Michael Snow: This is tape two of a State and Local Government Archives interview-- Part two of a State and Local Government Archives Interview with Reverend James J. Robinson. It is April 3rd, 2002. The interviewer is Michael Snow of the Archives Service Center. We're sitting in Reverend Robinson's offices in the Manchester Youth Development Center. Before I change the tape over, we were talking about some-- some of your more recent work, but I wanted to back up a bit to your to your time on the school board.

James Robinson: I was on there four years.

Snow: Right. And you described in some general detail how difficult that was because of desegregation fights. Robinson: Yeah. Right. Snow: Just wondering who you were able to work with, and--

Robinson: Jake Mullins was the person responsible for me being on the board in the first place. Snow: Oh, was he? Robinson: Yeah. And Jake and I were good friends. Jake was over in the North Side prior to the time that I ran against the president. I ran against the president of the school board. And-- but before that, he came on the North Side, he was talking and I was beating him up. And he says, well, if you're going to do all that, what you need to do is to run for school board. I laughed at him. So then I ended up running against the president, who was in my district. I can't even think of her name-- of the school board. And she won by a small margin. But then there was a small box that was found in Manchester, and then they had a recount and I won and then beat her out for-- for her seat on the-- on the board. Snow: Okay. Robinson: But Jake and I were good friends. And Jake and Saleh, I knew before I was on the board. And Saleh was then a strong community leader. He was-- Jake, and a group of young men were, I think, strong-- into a strong nationalist movement. I never did understand totally. But Jake, I knew him as a young man and I trusted him and liked him.

Robinson: And so he was the best friend I had on the school board. I knew him better than anybody else. But the school board always had a, uh, 5-4 vote during desegregation. And-- but my-- my involvement in school board was very distasteful. I didn't like it. It's too political. But it was a very-- they had some good people on the board at that time. And we went through some tough times of trying to get youngsters bussed from one neighborhood to another. The state mandated that we do it because, you know, some of the schools, most of the schools, were-- were segregated and moving youngsters from a white neighborhood to a Black neighborhood and busing Black kids to a white neighborhood. It was a tough deal and we had to do it. And, man, there was more demonstrations and people coming down with the flags from all these different neighborhoods and mostly from the white neighborhoods. They were upset. Their children had to be bussed into the Hill District of North Side. But that's the way it happened. That's what we had to do. And we were and I got on the board at that time.

Snow: So it sounds a lot more like Boston's experience than people had been telling me. They said Pittsburgh avoided a lot of that.

Robinson: Well, we were able to work with it better. Snow: Good. Robinson: We were able to work. There were some smart people on that board and there were some compromises made and some things that were done. And it-- and then-- then Wallace was good. The superintendent at that time was smart. And he was--it--it worked its way out. But, you know, it was a law. You know, the State Human Relations Committee just told us, this is what you got to do. And-- but it was--

Snow: [simultaneous talking] Of course, they'd been saying that since 1960 something.

Robinson: Well, we did it. Snow: That's good. Robinson: But we-- we-- we ended up doing it. We ended up making changes and working it out. And-- and then it-- it settled down.

Snow: What compromises were you able to make?

Robinson: Uh. I just think that people accepted most of the plan that we had. I just think that people eventually just accepted the plan that we had. It was a-- it was a-- I can't go into details about each school-- Snow: Okay. Robinson: --but I just think that the people saw that the board was smart, that, you know, that they weren't playing tricks on anybody. And then the people on the board, I believe, uh, didn't fight each other. They-- We were able to deal with each other in a way that-- That we all came to a conclusion. The board itself worked within themselves and with the plan that we had. And I think that's-- that was a difference. And it didn't drag on and on and on and on and on. It was settled.

Snow: Now, you were on the board when Dick Caliguiri was mayor, and-- Robinson: Yes. Snow: When Pete Flaherty had been mayor before him, he was interceding. And many in the civil rights movement would say he was-- he was trying to thwart desegregation. What was Caligiuri's role?

Robinson: Caligiuri was a pretty-- Uh, if I can remember, I think Caligiuri was a pretty straight up person. I don't think he played any games. I think he pretty well knew what the law was and was pretty well supportive of the board in the way that they acted. If I can remember correctly, he was pretty good. You're right. Flaherty was-- I can't remember Flaherty, though. Pete Flaherty. I can't remember what-- what it was before him. But Caligiuri was, if I can remember correctly, was pretty solid in the way that he saw the school board going about its business. He wanted to see the job done. He said-- I can remember him saying things like, It's the law. It's the thing that I want to support and I'm going to support the school board in the way that they do their job. And he went along. He went along. He didn't fight. He didn't oppose. He didn't come out saying that one thing and then another. And he was very supportive.

Snow: Which is kind of surprising for a city in which a white politician can get so many votes saying he's for neighborhood schools.

Robinson: Well, he's for neighborhood-- I think most-- I think most, even himself, wanted neighborhood schools. But they knew that the law was going to be-- be supreme. And and they knew that the board had to make changes and abide to the law that, you know, because we had met often with the-- with-- with the human relations, we met with them. And as as a Black person on the board, I did not want to see-- we didn't want to see that all-- all the busing was done one way. We wanted to see that it was fairly shared in abiding with the laws and I can't remember how many schools or what ratio was to be done, but it was-- it was done to most people's satisfaction. It was resolved. And it's like, I guess, Eisenhower said, you know, if I had my way, I would do it this way. But because the law says I have to do it, I'll do it, and I'll bring soldiers into Little Rock. Snow: Right. Robinson: And enforce the law. That's what a lot of people looked at. That's the way it was done. They knew that the law said that you had to do it. They didn't agree with it, but they knew it had to be done. So I look at it that-- that they didn't do like, uh, Mr. Wallace, who stood there and blocked people at the-- at the-- At, you know, stood in front of the troops to show people that he was a, you know, a decent-- an anti-- you know, a-- can't get the words out. They wanted to let him know that he was a segregationist to his heart, so he played out the role. But this didn't happen in this case. There's a lot of people who just didn't agree with it, but felt because they believed-- you know, and it's hard to-- it's hard. I believe in neighborhood schools, you know, very strongly, if they're good and equal, but they aren't equal. If there's something about the way that kids in one neighborhood that, you know, the Brown versus--

Snow: The Board of Education in Topeka--

Robinson: Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, it is not-- the field is not level. It is not-- it is separate but equal. It is-- it's-- it's separate, but it's-- and it's unequal too, you know, it's that way. It is not equal across the board. And that's-- in Pittsburgh, it was that way, too. And if-- I guess, even if I felt that you could get the best teachers and the best education in a Black school and get the best books and get all that, then I mean, you know, I guess I would have been for neighborhood schools. Why go to all that trouble of busing people and all that expense? But it just was not going to work. It just-- the field was not level in Pittsburgh, Boston, nowhere else. And then busing kids out of the neighborhood posed a lot of problems for a lot of us. But that was the law. We did it. And then I guess if you look at the bigger picture, you couldn't allow-- The more the people who really opposed it, if they opposed that and got away with it across the board, then they could deal with other issues in the same manner. You know, so you had to look at that thing too. Snow: Right. Robinson: You had to look at it that way. Then why not deal with it in restaurants? Why not deal with it in-- in-- in the bus stations? And why not deal with it with drinking water fountains? And why not do it there? You know, it's so that's just a small piece of the pie of the whole area of integration.

Snow: So who would you say were the strongest leaders on the school board-- Robinson: School board? Snow: --against you in that?

Robinson: There was a 5-4 vote. I can't think of all the-- there was me, Evelyn-- Let me see. There's me, Fran Vitti, Evelyn Nizer. Who else? There was another person on there. There was four of us. Oh, I can't think of his name. Oh, professor out of Pitt. Then there was Fink, John Connelly, who was Black. I can't think-- I can't think of other people. It was a 5-4 vote. I can't remember all the people on the board. Snow: That's okay.

Snow: So they were strongly against. And what were they arguing back?

Robinson: Uh, they-- They believed in neighborhood schools. Snow: Just that? Robinson: They believed that you shouldn't be busing people. It really didn't get into a deep civil rights argument. Some of us looked at the bigger picture of following the law because we felt that, you know, that-- The whole idea of segregation was wrong and you had to follow it by dealing with the whole idea of segregation in Pittsburgh. Yeah. I don't know if you follow me. If you didn't fight that battle, like with the NAACP, the Urban League and all the organizations who were strongly advocates of obeying the law, the law that came out of Congress-- I think came out of Congress-- that after the Brown versus Topeka Act was enforced around the country-- If we would allow Pittsburgh to back away from that and to allow neighborhood schools to-- to be enforced by a vote of the Pittsburgh public schools, that would have--then every other area of civil rights would have been for naught. Did I say that right? Snow: Yes. Robinson: Yeah. So you had to-- even though a person who was Black, who believed in neighborhood schools, had to really to-- to fight against the whole idea of a segregated school system.

Snow: As a tactical decision, basically.

Robinson: Yeah. Really, it was that. You can't piecemeal-- You can't piecemeal, uh, segregation. You can't piecemeal racism. You got to go-- You got to do the whole-- you got to do the whole thing. You got to fight for the whole. And that was only a piece of it. Snow: Right. Robinson: But you had to go at it. Snow: Right. Robinson: And that's-- that's the way I looked at it. I think it's the way Jake looked at it, too. Snow: Did he? Robinson: Mm-hm. We talked about it a lot.

Snow: And what was going on in Manchester in the 80s and 90s in terms of development and how was the city helping?

Robinson: Manchester was pretty quiet in the 80s. Wasn't much going on. Housing was the biggest issue, as I can remember. Uh, in Manchester. Pretty quiet, if I can remember, wasn't much going on in Manchester in the 80s.

Snow: I just see that a lot of the buildings in the homes around here have been renovated. I was wondering how-- how organized that was.

Robinson: Manch-- There was an organization that started all that called PAC, the Project Area Committee, and they went down and took on urban-- the Urban Redevelopment Authority. And there was a strong fight in the 60s to keep the area residential when it was-- when they tried to make it commercial. And the reason why there's commercial areas on the other side of the-- of the-- of the wall, of the China wall there, is because when they tried to enforce it, the big-- the big thing came-- the first one came when Otto Milk tried to bring a freezing unit-- Snow: Right. Robinson: --in there. And we stopped them.

Snow: You described that to me last time.

Robinson: Then Haughton Elevator tried to do that. We stopped that. But the big thing was, is when they tried-- Cole [ph] Tire tried to put their vulcanizing piece over where the Bidwell high rise is. When-- that was the key, when John Long jumped into the bulldozer and almost got killed, that's when the city stepped in. And said, you know, there's going to have to be a-- we're not going to allow the area to be commercial. Snow: Okay. Robinson: Then-- then-- then PAC began to put pressure on urban to bring-- to-- to make Duquesne Light begin to put a different sort of electricity in-- sidewalks, I think they made Duquesne put all the electricity underground. Snow: Wow. Robinson: Millions of dollars. A system of some kind, if I can remember. That's John Long. Then lights, streetlights, then herringbone bricks on the sidewalk. This is all PAC. Then PAC went out of business. PAC was more of a-- of a community organization, a fight group. Then they turned themselves around. I think Stanley Lowe had a great deal to do with that and made it into the Manchester Citizens Corporation. It became then more of an administrative group of dealing with housing in a way that fix up, making it historical, making sure that anything-- that nobody could come in here without going through them. They were the power brokers of housing in Manchester and still are-- the Manchester Citizens Corporation, because Manchester is historical. Snow: Right. Robinson: And they are the key to housing. And it grew out of PAC. It grew out of the fight. And that's one of the organizations, too, was here-- that came out and was supportive of the Black Construction Coalition out of Manchester because there was a lot of folks involved in that. But that.

Unidentified Speaker: Mrs. Brazil, would you please call extension zero?

Robinson: But MCC grew out of PAC.

Snow: And did Mayor Caligiuri's administration have a lot to do with this?

Robinson: [simultaneous talking] Yeah, they were very supportive. Snow: Were they? Robinson: Stanley Lowe was very influential in a lot of things that happened. Stanley grew up in Manchester, learned his community organization from-- from Manchester, went to Shaw University and came back into Manchester and did a lot of community organization. Stanley had a lot to do with MCC and did until he left his job at the Housing Authority. Stanley was very influential. Very smart.

Snow: And how involved were you in the gang-- anti-gang organizing?

Robinson: I wasn't too much involved in that at all. Not-- not at all. The only thing that I did was at the summit-- I saw it coming. Saw it coming. Wanted to retire when I saw it coming. And I told my wife, I said, look, we went through all this other stuff. I can see what's going on. Let's retire. And she told me, you know, you go ahead and retire. I'm not gonna leave. Snow: Oh, yeah? Robinson: Then-- then an incident happened up in front of my house. A young man was playing basketball up by the Divine Providence Hospital, got into an argument. Got in his car. They followed him. And down in front of my house where there was a bus stop. There was a bus bringing kids from other schools down to the center. This kid got out. Let me see. I don't know if he had a ride or whatever happened. He got out of the car. He got shot three times right in front of my house. And then they didn't-- Not only that, our kids saw it. Richard Garland was working here. And they come running in here screaming and yelling and hollering. And Richard settled them down because some of the kids wanted to go out and retaliate, the young men, because that was-- they knew the kid. But then they came back and shot him again and killed him. Snow: Good grief.

Robinson: I said, that's-- that's a call. I don't think I'm gonna retire. I said, something tells me that I'm going to have to hang in here. So we stayed. But I didn't have too much to do with the gang thing at all. I just, you know, we saw it. We try to protect our kids. But then every day there got to be a kind of a thing. It was a-- it was a count. Who got killed this weekend. Who got-- Nobody did anything. It was just-- we accepted it. Then Richard said we got to do something. So then that's how RSG started. We have a little organization up there. We said, we met with the guys and said, Look, there's an option here. Snow: RSG? Robinson: We have a little profit-making organization and we had Richard was working here. So we started and we had 16 gang members. Who-- who we had went through that thing. I said we weren't involved in the gangs, did it? So we went down the basement of the church. They graffitied the wall, set up a little organization. Some of them went to college, but there were options.

Snow: Wonderful.

Robinson: It's still running. That's who I just finished talking to, the manager. Snow: Oh, was it?

Snow: What does the acronym stand for?

Robinson: It's-- at first it was Richard Squirt Garvin. Now it's the retail-- Retail-- I don't know what that thing is on the sign up there. I can't-- myself-- I forget what-- what? That we changed it-- retail-- I have to call and ask. Snow: Okay. Robinson: But it's up on Western. It's 84-- 815 Western Avenue right in the middle of the block. 824 or 815.

Snow: I think I've run out of questions. Robinson: Are we finished? Snow: Yes. Robinson: Good. Snow: Thank you for your time.

Robinson: Okay.