Accesing the Archives //
Accesing the Archives //
The Cedric J. and Elizabeth P. Robinson Archives are currently undergoing digitization and will be made available by the Summer of 2026. Once available, the Robinson Archives will be made accessible online through the Online Archive of California or in person at the Department of Special Collections at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
To access finding aids on the Library Website, click below:
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The collection is held in partnership with the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University. These sources can be accessed here:
The Robinson Archives at UCSB is comprised of over twenty boxes of documents, photographs, posters, rare books, correspondence, media clippings, and audio recordings related to:
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Cedric J. Robinson’s teaching and program leadership at the University of Michigan, SUNY Binghamton, and UCSB.
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Elizabeth P. Robinson’s community media activism and journalism including No Alibis, Third World News Review, and work with the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC).
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Research materials and lecture transcripts related to Cedric J. Robinson’s pathbreaking scholarship, including books Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film Before World War II, and The Terms of Order: Political Science and the Myth of Leadership.
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The Robinsons’ community activism and engagement with organizations such as Casa de la Raza, KCSB, and the Institute of Race Relations and solidarities with revolutionary movements in Nicaragua, South Africa, Palestine, and Iraq, among others.
Researchers may also find materials in the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) at UCSB to be of interest:
“What I wanted to stress in Forgeries is that racial regimes are inventions. As inventions– and this is something that I wanted the movement to hear– resistances are always leaving residues.”
–Cedric Robinson
“Corporate media is critical in the way it constructs our reality. Creating a little alternative space is always really important; it’s always about being able to think about things differently. You might not be able to do anything at this very moment, but at least you can hold up some alternate possibilities. That’s part of what alternative media does.”
–Elizabeth Robinson