Patricia Robinson: A Black Radical Reading List
A collage of books inspired by the life, leadership, and legacy of Patricia Murphy Robinson. Many (if not all) the books in the collage were in Robinson’s personal library. Image courtesy of Dr. Robyn C. Spencer/Pat Archives.
By Dr. Robyn C. Spencer
A reading list from our event on “Celebrating The Life of Patricia Robinson: A Teach-In” featuring Dr. Robyn C. Spencer, Lupe Family, and Erika Hardison.
On Thursday, October 15th, 2020, Black Women Radicals hosted the event, "Celebrating The Life of Patricia Robinson: A Teach-In." The event featured Erika Harrison, Lupe, Family, and Dr. Robyn C. Spencer. The teach-in centered on and interrogated the life, legacy, and leadership of Patricia Murphy “Pat” Robinson. While a lesser known radical Black feminist, Robinson advocated for reproductive rights; socialism; was an ally to the LGBT community; and contributed significantly to our understandings of Black feminist thought and behavior. This event seeks to uplift her work and her legacy to showcase her leadership as integral to the Black radical tradition and our understanding of Black feminisms. You can read more about Robinson here and you can follow Pat Archives on Instagram here.
You can watch “Celebrating The Life of Patricia Robinson” on YouTube.
About the Panelists:
Erika Hardison is an aspiring novelist, journalist and founder of Fabulize Magazine—a print and digital publication covering entertainment and culture for Black feminist nerds.
Lupe Family is a novelist, playwright, and poet who writes about issues of society including socialism, labor, women and undoing racism with raw clarity, creativity and layered insight. She is the author of "To Face It”, a novel about radical women of color in NY that is available for purchase online through Indiebooks and other outlets. Her YouTube channel ‘Lupe ToFaceIt’ contains shorts from the video series of Pat Murphy Robinson that she is working on—Pat Murphy Robinson: The Woman/ A Black Revolutionary Molecule. You can find her work here and here.
Robyn Spencer is an Associate Professor of History at Lehman College where she teaches courses on the Black freedom movement. She is the author of The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender and the Black Panther Party published by Duke University Press. Professor Spencer is a committed activist and participates in several initiatives aimed at bringing the history of the Black Power movement to community-based spaces. In addition, she is working on biographies of both Angela Davis and Patricia Murphy Robinson. You can read more about her work here.
PATRICIA MURPHY ROBINSON READING LIST: 15 ESSENTIAL SOURCES
Lessons from the Damned: Class Struggle in the Black Community by the Damned
"Birth Control Pills and Black Children," "A response," and "Poor Black Women."
https://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/wlmpc_wlmms01008/
Malcolm X: A Man and His Times edited by John Henrik Clarke.
Still lifting, still climbing: contemporary African American women's activism by Kimberly Springer:
https://nyupress.org/9780814781258/still-lifting-still-climbing/
Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D. G. Kelley.
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780807009772?aff=penguinrandom
The Black Woman edited by Toni Cade: https://www.discoverbooks.com/The-Black-Woman-An-Anthology-Bambara-Toni-Cade-p/0743476972.htm?cond=0003&gclid=CjwKCAjwiaX8BRBZEiwAQQxGx3e1f7wlYq2oP86uvLevCBQGmk2M-_uixwtW-YMIOA69UqxNeN8sLxoCdwwQAvD_BwE
"Diversity in Women's Liberation Ideology: How a Black and a White Group of the 1960s Viewed Motherhood." by M. Rivka Polatnick. Signs 21, no. 3 (1996): 679-706. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175175
Freedom for Women: Forging the Women's Liberation Movement, 1953-1970 by Carol Giardina: https://upf.com/book.asp?id=GIARD001
Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power in the 20th Century by Rhonda Y. Williams: https://www.routledge.com/Concrete-Demands-The-Search-for-Black-Power-in-the-20th-Century/Williams/p/book/9780415801430
"How did we get to feminism so white?" by Michelle Moravec. Medium. January 7, 2018: https://medium.com/@ProfessMoravec/how-did-we-get-to-feminism-so-white-648218277b54
"Re-Visioning the Women's Liberation Movement's Narrative: Early Second Wave African American Feminists." Rosalyn Baxandall, .Feminist Studies 27, no. 1 (2001): 225-45.: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3178460
Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-AmericanFeminist Thought by Beverly Guy-Sheftall: https://thenewpress.com/books/words-of-fire