REMEMBERING BILL LEWELLEN AND RANDALL ROBINSON
©Wendell Griffen, 2023
Senator
Bill Lewellen and Randall Robinson recently joined the ancestors. Both men were
Black lawyers. Both were unflinching civil rights activists. We should honor
their lives and work.
Bill Lewellen was one of two Black lawyers from Lee County – the other being retired Court of Appeals Judge Olly Neal – who challenged white supremacy and race discrimination in Lee County, other Southeast Arkansas communities, and in Arkansas public policies. Like Olly Neal, Bill Lewellen commuted daily from Marianna to attend law school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. As a state senator, he sponsored the legislation that created the Arkansas Minority Health Commission so that Arkansas could focus on racial disparities in health. He was one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs in the landmark Lakeview School District lawsuit that challenged the way state funding was distributed for public school districts. Lewellen’s work to improve life for people in Lee County, other Southeast Arkansas communities, and across Arkansas was recently reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in this article that was published following his death: https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/mar/23/arkansas-2nd-black-senator-of-20th-century-dies/.
One of my most cherished memories of Bill’s influence, and his tenacity, occurred when he won a federal injunction that prevented him from being prosecuted by a white prosecutor who was notorious among Black people for being unfair. Bill sued the white prosecutor, deputy prosecutor, county sheriff, and the circuit and district judges, and won an injunction against the prosecutor. By doing so, Bill showed that he was not afraid to counter-attack white supremacy. He was not afraid to take on a racist legal system contaminated by slavocracy. Bill Lewellen refused to confuse social cordiality with racial justice. He knew that racial injustice has long been practiced and continued in this society beneath the veneer of cordiality. So, Bill Lewellen, while cordial, did not hesitate to challenge the injustices he recognized as hindrances to authentic community.
Randall Robinson was a Black lawyer who challenged white supremacy and racism as it affected Black people in the United States and across the world. A graduate of Virginia Union University and Harvard Law School, Randall Robinson was founder of TransAfrica, a public policy thinktank focused on US policies toward Africa and the Caribbean. In that role, Robinson was a prominent Black supporter of efforts to dismantle apartheid in South Africa, to restore democracy in Haiti, and to promote social and economic justice for nations in the Caribbean.
Like Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and W.E.B. DuBois, Randall Robinson eventually left the United States. Robinson’s personal and professional history, including his staunch advocacy for reparations for Black descendants of enslaved persons and his principled criticism of US policies towards Haiti, other Caribbean nations, and Africa, was chronicled in this recent reflection published by the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/us/randall-robinson-dead.html.
Despite being ignored by corporate news media, most US politicians, Black civil rights organizations, and human rights organizations, Robinson was bold and blunt in interviews with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now after former Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide and his wife, Mildred, were kidnapped by US forces on February 29, 2004, in what Robinson and Aristide termed a “US military coup.”[i] Most members of the US Congress (including members of the Congressional Black Caucus), diplomats in the United Nations, human rights groups, and faith groups (including Black religious bodies and leaders) looked the other way and did nothing about the overthrow of a democratically-elected leader of a Black nation in the Western Hemisphere by the nation that boasts of being “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” However, Randall Robinson denounced that action and the long history of US involvement in Haitian suffering in his book titled, An Unbroken Agony:
https://books.google.com/books/about/An_Unbroken_Agony.html?id=l6IXAAAAYAAJ
Randall Robinson was not a theologian. He was not a member of the clergy. He was not an elected official. Nevertheless, he was unflinchingly prophetic regarding Haiti, reparations for descendants of formerly enslaved Africans, and the impact of US imperialism on Africa and the Caribbean for decades. One wonders how the history of Haiti, the Caribbean, Africa, and how racial justice in the US might have been different if the prophetic integrity of Randall Robinson had been exercised by US politicians, civil rights leaders, and religious leaders.
Bill Lewellen and Randall Robinson knew why they were in the world. They fought for racial justice. They defended the dignity of Black people. We should cherish their sacrifices and their refusal to play nice with the purveyors of injustice. They deserve that much from us, and much more.
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