Pat! A Revolutionary Black Molecule
Lupe Family, 2015, 60 min.
Please join us for a very special evening dedicated to the legacy of Black socialist-feminist organizer, writer, thinker, educator, and therapist, Patricia Murphy Robinson, whose under-celebrated legacy shaped the movement for Black women’s liberation instrumentally!
Born in 1926 to an “almost rich” family in segregated Maryland, Pat earned degrees in psychotherapy and social work in Boston MA, before moving to Westchester, NY where she volunteered at Planned Parenthood and began organizing alongside Black/Latino women. She was keen on bringing together people of all backgrounds and genders who were willing to think critically about the issues impacting their communities. In her writing work, she drew necessary connections between the racism, male supremacy violence, and class domination uniquely experienced by poor Black women and, as a member of the Organization for African American Unity and close friend of Malcolm X, she was also quick to analyze intra-communal violence—such as misogyny and intimate partner abuse—within movement spaces.
As a mother, educator, and practicing social worker, Pat saw the ways family units often replicated the structures of patriarchal, capitalist exploitation. She was a long-time advocate of reproductive freedom, and her support for birth control and mental health treatment was as much about bodily autonomy as it was about disrupting the bourgeoisie’s control over Black and Brown families. In this way, her sharp political analysis reached all realms of life: the psychological, familial, energetic, societal, and global. Pat was a generous educator and mentor, and helped other women organizers sharpen the tools to write, teach, and struggle with militance and clarity.
