After being exposed to the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1960 Greensboro, North Carolina sit-ins, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson was propelled into getting involved in the civil rights movement. This civil rights activist was a leader. Robinson was born on April 25, 1942 in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in Summerhill, an Atlanta middle class town. She was the second oldest of seven siblings. In 1958, she graduated from Prince High School. Robinson became a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) field representative in 1960. This was after she attended a huge meeting for college students in Raleigh, North Carolina at Shaw University. Robinson served in setting up chapters in Charleston, South Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee and Mc Comb, Mississippi. In February of 1961 at the age of 18, Robinson along with three other SNCC leaders went to Rock Hill, South Carolina to partake in the sit-in movement in that city. They proposed a “Jail-No-Bail” sit-in strategy. The aspect of this protest led to a jail sentence of 30 days for Robinson and hundreds of participants. Afterwards, Robinson carried on her activism by joining in on “Freedom Rides”. As a result, she landed in Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi for 45 days where she was mistreated by prison guards along with other activists. She also worked as an assistant secretary for SNCC at their Atlanta office where her responsibilities included bookkeeping, arranging the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign and managing SNCC’s Sojourner Truth Motor Fleet. The 1964 Freedom Summer campaign took place from June to August of that year in Mississippi. It was a non-violent resolution arranged by civil rights activists intending to integrate Mississippi’s segregated political system. The Sojourner Truth Motor Fleet was brought into existence by SNCC after field secretaries suffered from a lack of transportation. Vehicles were purchased on their behalf to help workers who traveled across long stretches of highways and dusty back roads in the rural areas of the Deep South. Later in 1964 she became married to Clifford Robinson and had one son named Kenneth Toure Robinson in 1965. She furthered her education by attending Spelman College and graduated with a degree in Physical Education in 1965. In her short life of just 25 years, she was a purposeful woman who accomplished much in a little amount of time and hoped that she could have conquered more. Robinson died on October 7, 1967.

click here