Cedric James Robinson was born in Oakland, California, on November 5, 1940. He was a sickly baby who, the story goes, was kept alive when a great aunt fed him “potliquor,” juice from the greens she was stewing. The little guy had to fight to survive, and maybe that foretold his modus vivende for the next 75 years. Surely he also learned that that collaboration was a necessity and that a sense of humor was essential. He often said that there was great value in the struggle, regardless of the outcome.
As a child growing up in Oakland, he experienced both American apartheid and the intellectual nourishment provided by black teachers and mentors who instilled in him a love of learning, of reading. He continued his education at Berkeley High School and then at UC Berkeley, where he studied anthropology. Outside the classroom, his political activities in pursuit of civil rights and opposition to U.S. foreign policy would lead to a one-semester suspension from the university. He and others organized a campus demonstration against the attempted U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1961, and they were penalized for failing to give authorities 48 hours’ notice. His retort, an unsuccessful defense, was that the U.S. government had not given citizens 48 hours’ notice of the invasion.
This suggests the arrogance of a 20-year-old, and Cedric could be arrogant but, in my experience, only with those who presumed they were entitled. It was an arrogance born of his refusal to be cowed by the power holders, be they local police demanding to know what was in his briefcase or academics who considered the academy their rarified preserve. Cedric would receive his PhD from Stanford, but only after a fight. He had the temerity to critique the “giants” of political science, many of whom were Stanford faculty. The Terms of Order, just republished after 30-plus years out of print, was based on that critique.
