Unyielding Voices: Global Resistance and the Black Radical Tradition

“Through most of our lives and work, Cedric and I have had deep commitments to collaboration, internationalism, and solidarity movements.”–Elizabeth Robinson, 2024

This exhibition documents the life’s work of Cedric J. Robinson and Elizabeth Peters Robinson, placing it in the global context of the Black radical tradition. The Robinsons were renowned for their seminal scholarship and activism that had wide-ranging influence at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB), in academia, and across many public arenas. The exhibition is drawn from the Cedric J. and Elizabeth P. Robinson Archive (“Robinson Archive”) and supplemented by a variety of materials from other collections in UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections, as well as personal contributions from Elizabeth Robinson.

“[The Black radical tradition is] the continuing development of a collective consciousness informed by the historical struggles for liberation and motivated by the shared sense of obligation to preserve the collective being, the ontological totality.”

–Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, 1983

A deeply influential educator, Cedric Robinson (1940-2016) was a well-known scholar of racial capitalism and the Black radical tradition, and an active participant in political movements, both at home and internationally. For more than 30 years, Elizabeth Robinson has been an educator, social worker, former associate director for media at KCSB-FM radio, activist, and community media producer.

With the 2024 acquisition of the Robinson Archive from Elizabeth Robinson and the Robinsons’ daughter Najda Ife Robinson-Mayer, the Library launched the Post-Custodial, Community-based and Participatory Archives Project. This initiative aims to establish a living archive at UCSB centered on the Black Radical Tradition and the broader field of Black Studies. The Robinson Archive serves as an important anchor for the larger project, and will enable global research, teaching, scholarship, and sociopolitical and cultural activism for future generations.

This exhibition was curated by Yolanda Blue, the Library’s Curator of American and International History, Politics, and Cultures Collections, in collaboration with New York University and UCSB Library staff.