News that the U.S. Navy had exonerated 256 Black sailors who were unjustly court-martialed in 1944 after the Port Chicago explosion in California was all the alert I needed to contact my friend and co-author Robert Allen. I wanted to chat with him about the news since it was his book, “The Port Chicago Mutiny” (1989), that enlightened me about the incident. I was curious about whether the news reports would mention his account and ask him for a quote.
It was merely by chance that in seeking that information I learned Robert had died on July 10, a week before the sailors were exonerated. One piece of good news led me to some bad news. He was 82.
Long before our lives intersected, I knew of Allen through his activist journalism in his informative book “Black Awakening in Capitalist America” (1969), and his articles in the National Guardian, a radical newsweekly. When I began submitting articles to the Black Scholar journal, where he was among the founding editors, our relationship blossomed. Nearly a generation went by before we began our collaboration on the anthology “Brotherman—The Odyssey of Black Men in America” (1995). A shared division of labor on the project brought us closer together and I learned what a skilled editor he was and how self-effacing he could be. It was also during a time when his relationship with Alice Walker was coming to an end.
Allen was born on May 29, 1942, in Atlanta, Ga., at Harris Memorial Hospital on Hunter Street. His parents were community activists and it wasn’t long before he, too, was involved in social and political fights for equal justice.
He attended the E.R. Carter Elementary School and Booker T. Washington High School, both in Atlanta. His academic journey continued at Morehouse College, where he earned a bachelor of arts in 1963 and was a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He spent an undergraduate year studying in Vienna, Austria, as a Merrill Scholar. In New York City, he did graduate work at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research. He completed his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California, San Francisco.
Allen’s doctoral research on racial dynamics in labor movements led him to broader scholarly endeavors, including civil and human rights. “Black Awakening in Capitalist America” was the culmination of his study and participation in various political formations, particularly those involved in the anti-war movement.
Allen’s book about Black militants and their organizations was widely reviewed and became required reading and accompanied the rise of Black studies.
“The fact of black America as a semi-colony, or what has been termed domestic colonialism, lies at the heart of this study,” he wrote in the book’s introduction. “It is at one and the same time the most profound conclusion to be drawn from a survey of the black experience in America, and also the basic premise upon which an interpretation of black history can be constructed.”
When he wasn’t on the ramparts or chasing behind activists, charting their movements and struggles, Allen was in the classroom, teaching at several colleges, including San Jose State University and Mills College in Oakland.
In 1963, he married Pam Allen, and “The Reluctant Reformers: The Impact of Racism on Social Movement in the U.S.” (1983) was one of their publications. During his companionship with Alice Walker, they founded Wild Trees Press, publishing “As Wonderful As All That,” the memoir of Henry Crowder‘s affair with Nancy Cunard—he the gifted Black pianist, she the white shipping line heiress.
Allen’s legacy of excellence in academia and activism was often highlighted in the classroom at the University of California, Berkeley, and I was often privy to some of his lectures as we worked on “Brotherman.” He was more than a worthy constituent—a soul brother in every way, and he will be missed by a community of scholars and activists nurtured by his extensive and passionate research. It’s a shame that he didn’t live to see the Black sailors exonerated, but there is every indication in his study of the incident that he knew that one day, they would have their day in court.