Ruby Doris Smith Robinson

Ruby Doris Smith Robinson was born on April 25, 1942, in Atlanta, Georgia, the second oldest of seven children. She grew up in Atlanta's Summerhill neighborhood in a striving Black family; her mother, Alice Smith, was a beautician, and her father, J. T. Smith, worked as a mover and served as a Baptist minister. Raised with a fierce sense of purpose, she resolved as a young woman to give her life to the freedom of her people.

While a student at Spelman College, she joined the Atlanta Student Movement and, in February 1961, traveled to the Rock Hill, South Carolina, sit-ins. That spring she became a Freedom Rider, was beaten and jailed, and served time in Mississippi's Parchman Penitentiary rather than post bail — an early sign of the discipline and resolve that would define her.

By 1963 she had become the administrative secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), running its Atlanta headquarters with formidable rigor. She coordinated field work across Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia and organized the Sojourner Truth Motor Fleet to keep organizers moving. In May 1966 she was elected SNCC's executive secretary — the first and only woman to hold that office — bringing order and accountability to a strained organization.

Ruby Doris Smith Robinson married Clifford Robinson and, in 1965, gave birth to their son, Kenneth Toure Robinson. In 1967 she fell gravely ill and died of cancer on October 7, 1967, at only twenty-five. Stokely Carmichael called her "a tower of strength." Small in years but immense in labor, she held a movement together with her own steady hands. May her name be spoken with honor.