April 28, 2009 - DC Urban LifeStyle Magazine spoke with Mrs.
Jean Robinson at the unveiling of the memorial bust for Sojourner Truth.
"I am an 83 year-old woman who has been through everything you could imagine a Black woman could be going through.
I am so thrilled to be alive and see this day that C. Delores Tucker help found. She was one of my classmates
at Philadelphia High School for girls."
Her book,
How to Survive In Spite of Your Family, (written without the aid of computers) is
a frank discussion of racism in the family. Robinson, born to a half-white mother and a Black father experienced
that racism from her own mother, and siblings.
"Now it (racism) is becoming so popular since we're (the country) are talking about racism like we never did before.
I have always talked about it. My mother was half-white, and she never liked me and I knew it", said Robinson.
"I was the brownest of her five children, and she never liked me. And yet, God let me live to be the oldest African
American in the world to get a masters degree at the age of 83."
Robinson recounts the hurtful things her mother would say.
"She would say, there it is, over there in the corner, look at it. Isn't it ugly? She said that to her sister when
she came to see the new baby. I didn't know that until I was fifteen when my aunt told me."
When asked about her other siblings she says most are dead.
"The 'beautiful' ones died early. There's only one brother left, and I'm told he's not well at all."
"They were permitted to call me o
ld Black pickininny, and you're the maid, and you're too ugly to sleep with me, and too Black to get in our games. So, I would sit
on the sidelines."
Overcoming The Racism
Robinson said she eventually dealt with the hurt by reading and studying.
"That got my mother's attention. See, she herself, was a college professor."
Robinson later married a long-time friend, Leon Robinson, who was a psychiatrist.
"He would explain it (the racism) to me. Now I understand, and I've forgiven them.
