Saturday, January 14, 2023

Estelle Richmond Robinson, and the Forgotten Activists of the 1960s



Estelle Richmond Robinson, and the Forgotten Activists of the 1960s

by Jordan Antebi
Professor Alison Isenberg
May 8, 2018
This paper represents my own work in accordance with University regulations. [s/Jordan Antebi]

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Image 1 (cover): Estelle Richmond Robinson moderates “What’s Happening in My World?” a workshop of city women at the Trenton YMCA, 1971.

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Introduction
In late 1971, 26 women—11 black and 15 white—convened at the YMCA in Trenton, New Jersey for an urban issues workshop titled “What’s Happening in My World?”1 The event—part of a series sponsored by the Rutgers University Bureau of Community Services (BCS)—was described in the local newspaper as a “real exercise of the mind and the vocal chords,” a “free-flowing round-table discussion” about topics such as “drugs, the PTA, snobbishness of the suburbs, problems of housing, newspapers and parental responsibility.”2 The early 1970s represented the political zenith of both second-wave feminism and the liberal counterculture, and this event was no exception in its social and cultural embodiment of the times. It was a gathering for Trenton women about their challenges and concerns in a changing city.
At the center of the group sat one woman, Estelle Richmond Robinson, an urban specialist at Rutgers-New Brunswick BCS, who led the session, gesturing, listening, talking, and moderating the discussion. She was substituting that day for another colleague who usually led the workshops, but conducted the day’s event as her own. There was something about her— perhaps it was her thoughtfulness, her calm voice, or her smile—that put the other participants at ease and encouraged them to speak candidly about specific concerns. She was demonstrative, looked the other women in the eye, and listened intently as they described their vulnerabilities
1 Dixon, Diana E. “Women Discuss City Life,” undated 1971 news clipping from Alexander Library, Rutgers University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964-2001. (accessed February 1, 2017)
2 Ibid.

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and discussed their differences. Robinson was a natural communicator, a leader for bringing people together and uniting them as one cohesive unit.3
The occasion was a homecoming of sorts for Estelle Robinson, whose career in political organizing, and policymaking began in Trenton nearly two decades before. Looking across the room, she could identify other women in the group— women she grew up with, women she lived near, or women she worked with—whom she still considered friends or colleagues, even years after departing the city political scene. Those personal and professional relationships, which transcended age, geography and race, helped coalesce the civic working group. “The common thread that we have here,” she said, “is the interest in Trenton and trying to do something to help the city. Some of you have walked out of each session with frustrations and a sense of not covering all there is to cover. There isn’t any other way to feel, though, when you begin thinking about the solutions to these problems...”4
As a resident born and bred in Trenton, a mid-sized, Northern manufacturing city, Estelle loved her community “warts and all,” its people, its places, its diversity, and embraced the political fight against its challenges, including racism, sexism, poverty and inequality.5 From a young age, she took a special interest in social activism, interpersonal relationships and what she called “getting people together” to advocate public policies related to these issues.6 Her ability to organize political coalitions by personally connecting with people, a technique she called
3 This description is a personality composite of Estelle Robinson the author generated from personal and professional descriptions by friends, colleagues and relatives. For a full list of those interviewed, whose views were consulted, see “Author’s Interviews” after the Works Cited.
4 Ibid.
5 Ann M. Wilson interview with author, February 17, 2018.
6 Robinson, Estelle R. Untitled speech, Networks and the New Jersey Network on Adolescent Pregnancy, manuscript, ca. 1982. From Alexander Library, Rutgers University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964-2001. (accessed February 1, 2017)

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“Networking,” earned her the lasting personal and professional respect of male and female colleagues, politicians, educators, friends, and neighbors alike until her death in 2015. Through a lifetime of dedicated hard work, she refined Networking, starting as a PTA volunteer during the 1950s and working her way—despite having no formal higher education except a B.A. in bacteriology—to a tenured university administrator and professor in social work.
In 1985, shortly before her retirement as Director of the Center for Community Education—the successor agency to Rutgers BCS—Robinson published a pamphlet titled A Guide to Networking. The small, yellow booklet outlined a de facto mission statement for her political organizing strategy, as well as a reflection on the professional objectives, experiences and achievements from her public career spanning more than three decades. Inside the guide, she defined Networking as building “a system of cooperation through which diverse groups and individuals are flexibly linked together by a shared focus...,” such as services provision, policy planning, or advocacy.7 Networks were “neither superagencies nor formal organizations,” but information sharing entities to help cities “avoid duplication and competition andÉemphasize sharing and mutual cooperation.”8 Through personal relationships and connectivity, she said, Networks could help city residents, policymakers and organizations “exchange information and resourcesÉto expand their effectiveness,” just as the women at the YMCA exchanged perspectives and ideas to build inter-group trust.9
The formal origins for Estelle’s Networking concept dated to the turbulent 1960s, when unrest flared in American cities. From 1961-1967, she served as a volunteer community
7 Robinson, Estelle R. A Guide to Networking. Center for Community Education, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 1985, p. 1-2.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid, p. 1.

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organizer and an unpaid, Mayoral-appointed member of the Board of Education in Trenton, where she observed organizational duplicity and bureaucratic neglect toward the city’s most vulnerable constituents.10 In the months between the “long, hot” Summer of 1967 and Dr. Martin Luther King’s April 1968 assassination, there grew a sense of urgency in activist and policymaking circles of Trenton and other Northern cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Camden and Newark, to politically mobilize neighborhood communities, reform public policies and prepare against the possible outbreak of racial violence. Robinson was part of this effort, drawing upon her grass roots experience to alert civic leaders in Trenton and other New Jersey cities of the need for better communication, cooperation, and coordination.
Decades before the modern computer social network, Estelle Robinson envisioned the “network” as a mechanism to organize, unify and empower individual citizens in the urban political process. When her public career in Trenton ended in 1967 due to partisan politics outside her control, she brought these ideas to a statewide audience at Rutgers, where she used them to develop a policy framework for family health education in the 1970s and 1980s. As a woman in public leadership during the 1950s and 1960s, she forged her own independent career as a community organizer and policy specialist outside the traditional occupational confines of elected office, academia, and religion from which she was discouraged or outright excluded. She developed the Networking concept by using her quick mind, gift of people skills and shrewd knack for politics to circumvent the social and political barriers that challenged her. Robinson’s passion for families, child welfare and education also distinguished her career as an early
10 Robinson, Estelle R. A City Views the University, manuscript, April 1968. From Alexander Library, Rutgers University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964-2001. (accessed February 1, 2017); also Goodman, James E. “‘Solution’ to THS Crisis Fails to Satisfy Anybody,” Trenton Evening Times, December 21, 1967.

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second-wave feminist and policy specialist in reproductive healthcare, early childhood development, and the educational achievement gap.
Estelle Robinson’s story spans post-war liberalism’s golden era, movements such as women’s rights, civil rights, and the War on Poverty, and epitomizes the profound contributions of liberal activists working in cities during the 1960s. Through an examination of her life, particularly her time within the City of Trenton, we can see the long-term legacy of grassroots community organizing from the 1960s, how it has matured and evolved. With 2018 marking the 50th anniversary of the Kerner Commission Report, it may be easy to write off America’s social progress toward racial and economic equality as a national disappointment. However, in doing so, society neglects the stories of earnest, well-intentioned community organizers and public servants particularly in the smaller, Northern cities like Robinson who worked during the War on Poverty and civil rights movements, and remained afterward, “laboring in the vineyards” as she once said, to achieve a better, more humane society.11
Estelle Robinson’s contributions and those of her colleagues—the forgotten urban activists—represent a historical aspect of the 1960s that has remained untold or largely misunderstood for years in modern organizing and policy circles, and urban neighborhoods. Even Eve Robinson, Estelle’s youngest daughter, who, inspired by her mother, pursued her own career in higher education and public service, recalls she “would always talk to me about this stuff,” but asks rhetorically “How much did I take in?” Today, Eve reflects upon her mother’s career, and, with hindsight, recalls how it profoundly affected her and her sisters Joy and Amy.
“We, her children, I guess, took her work for granted.”12
11 Robinson, Estelle R. Untitled speech, 30th Anniversary Celebration Center for Community Education, manuscript, 1996. From Alexander Library, Rutgers University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964-2001. (accessed February 1, 2017)
12 Eve Robinson interview with author, December 6, 9, 2016; February,8, March 2, 2018.

Image 2: Estelle, professional public servant, ca. 1965.

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A Priceless Heritage, A Good Name, and the Esteem of Fellows.
Josephine Richmond was born in Trenton on February 27, 1921, the youngest child of Evelyn and Israel Richmond. Later, her name was changed to Estelle in homage to her mother’s “favorite cousin” Esther.13 During this time—the ‘Roaring Twenties’—sales soared at the family’s downtown tire business and Mr. Richmond allegedly wanted to name their daughter “Bergougnan,” after the shop’s fastest selling brand.14 Thankfully, his wife “quickly...voted down...that idea,” and, instead, Estelle’s namesake became the Jewish heroine and Persian queen, celebrated during the holiday Purim for her bravery and ingenuity.15 It was a fitting name choice for a young girl, whose upbringing incorporated progressive Jewish values such as feminism, social justice, and volunteerism.
During the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, Evelyn and Israel Richmond immersed themselves in Trenton’s civil society and, through example, instilled in their two daughters the importance of community service and personal relationships—an idea Estelle’s older sister Ruth Richmond Adams described as “the necessity of caring about the needs of others.”16 As Ashkenazic Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Richmonds came from working class backgrounds, but achieved success as skilled entrepreneurs during the 1920s and 1930s. Profitable ventures related to the burgeoning automobile industry, including the tire shop, a downtown parking garage, and Trenton’s first interstate bus line to Pennsylvania, allowed the couple to move in the early 1920s and raise a family in West Trenton, the city’s affluent, upper-
13 Adams, Ruth Richmond. “Immigrant Pioneers.” The Jewish Magazine, May 2011. <http://www.jewishmag.com/154mag/immigrant_pioneers/immig>; also, Eve Robinson.
14 Ibid.
15 Adams, “Immigrant Pioneers.”
16 Ibid.

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middle class area.17 Their early upward mobility as immigrants and social interest in people distinguished the couple in Trenton as independent, forward thinking “Jewish pioneers,” and civic leaders during the Depression-era.18
Years later, Estelle would cite her mother Evelyn’s feminism, and insatiable concern for people, especially children, as inspiration for her own vocation.19 “My mother spent her life taking care of people,” wrote Estelle’s sister Ruth Richmond Adams, noting their mother’s difficult upbringing in Russia-Poland.20 Evelyn’s mother Anna had six children, and she allegedly died attempting to abort a seventh pregnancy.21 Ruth recalled their mother describing how, as a teenager, she “was told to take care of all of the children, even though she had an older sister.”22 One can imagine the young girl’s shock of having her mother die, and then caring for her own kin, barely an adult herself. This experience of losing her mother due to inadequate reproductive healthcare, and then having to care for the family likely affected Mrs. Richmond, and made her an early supporter of women’s health, family and children’s welfare, passions she passed on to a young Estelle.
In Trenton, Mrs. Richmond earned a reputation for her “warm, human interest [in] people,” Jewish philanthropy, and civic leadership.23 Before immigrating to the United States at a young adult age, she was “an ardent Zionist” and ran in radical, leftist political circles that
17 Ibid; also, Eve Robinson, interview with author. The date the Richmonds moved to Eastfield Avenue was either 1921 or 1924, according to Ruth Richmond Adams.
18 Ibid.
19 Eve Robinson; also, Joy Robinson-Lynch, interviews with author.
20 Ibid.
21 Joy Robinson-Lynch interview with author, December 1, 2016; March 10, 2018
22 Adams, “Immigrant Pioneers.”
23 “Resolution: Evelyn Richmond,” Jewish Federation of Trenton, June 1961. From Jewish Federation of Princeton-Mercer-Bucks, Board of Directors Minutes, Notes and Resolutions, Jewish Federation of Trenton, 1963-1980. (accessed November 1, 2016)

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included David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel.24 In Trenton, she became a dedicated volunteer for the Jewish National Fund, the Bonds of Israel drive, and Hadassah, the Jewish women’s organization whose Hebrew namesake was Esther. Her professional role model was Henrietta Szold, the American Jewish Zionist who founded Hadassah in 1912. Szold also helped direct Youth Aliyah, the Hadassah-affiliated organization founded in 1933 to rescue and resettle European and North African Jewish children in Palestine.25
Inspired by Szold, Mrs. Richmond organized and led local progressive, Jewish, and women’s organizations such as the Trenton Council on Human Relations, the Jewish Federation of Trenton, and the Trenton chapters of Planned Parenthood, Hadassah and Youth Aliyah during the Depression era.26 After the start of World War II, she “immersed herself” in the Youth Aliyah project, and organized fundraising efforts at gala dinners and annual drives—during which she enlisted the efforts of her teenage daughters—to “save many children from the gas chambers in Germany and Poland.”27 She received several honors and commendations for her work, including a series of letters from the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban and a special plaque from Hadassah in Negba, Israel honoring her leadership on behalf of Youth Aliyah.28
Estelle’s sister Ruth remembered they both “had a happy childhood. Our parents doted on us and thought we were wonderful.” Their mother “made us matching [silk] dresses on her
24 Adams, “Immigrant Pioneers”; also, Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid; also, “Brief Illness Proves Fatal: Dies at Age 70,” Trenton Evening Times, May 26, 1961. “Mother and Dad could also not understand why black people were kept out of the unions,” Ruth recalls. “They belonged [during the 1940s] to the Council for Human Relations and worked hard to get black men admitted into the unions. One such person was a man named John Mack from the West Indies. He was highly intelligent as well as a skilled electrician. They worked hard to get him admitted to the union. Finally, he was.”
27 Adams, “Immigrant Pioneers.”
28 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author; also, “Mrs. Richmond Honored,” Trenton Evening Times, February 1, 1953.

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Singer Sewing Machine: blue for me and red for Estelle with beautiful embroidery across the top,” which the girls wore for special occasions. Such occasions included Sundays, when Mrs. Richmond dressed the girls in their finery and had them visit the elderly “who lived alone.” Ruth fondly recalled those visits, since “we always got a few coins to put in our pocketbooks over Mother’s protests.”29
Estelle Robinson left Trenton in 1937 after graduating Trenton High School to attend Cornell University, where she graduated in 1941 with a B.A. in Bacteriology. She returned to the city during the mid-1940s to find work as a lab assistant and, then, raise a family with her husband Dr. Irving W. Robinson. During this time, Estelle joined her mother at Hadassah, Planned Parenthood and Youth Aliyah, helping her organize events and appeals throughout the 1950s.30 Mrs. Richmond also lived to see Estelle appointed and sworn-in to the Trenton Board of Education, an accomplishment she celebrated shortly before her death in May 1961. When Evelyn Richmond passed away, the Jewish Federation of Trenton produced a special resolution honoring her “outstanding” leadership and “untold services...for the Jews of our community.” The organization’s Board of Directors lauded “her warm affectionate, contagious interest in children” and the “tireless energies [she] expended in maintaining the interest of the local community in Youth Aliyah.” Mrs. Richmond’s service to the city, they said, left her own children “a priceless heritage, a good name, [and] the esteem and love of her fellows.”31

29 Adams, “Immigrant Pioneers.”
Years later, Ruth Richmond Adams credited her parents with teaching her and Estelle that “relationships...[were] the most important aspect in life,” and cited a belief the sisters learned growing up at synagogue, which Ruth believed their mother demonstrated in practice,
30 Eve Robinson; also, Joy Robinson-Lynch, interviews with author.
31 Resolution: Evelyn Richmond,” Jewish Federation of Trenton, June 1961.

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that “religion is the relationship of person to person, and through that relationship one finds God.”32 Estelle and her husband Dr. Irving W. Robinson were not observant Jews in the sense of outward religious practice, yet they maintained a secular Jewish identity, in part, through a shared belief in humanistic, ethical culture and the secular, but inherently Jewish, progressive values that Estelle learned from her mother.33 Social justice ideals, which Estelle and Irving called “human values” rather than Jewish values, helped provide the couple a moral center for their political advocacy during the 1960s, including the belief that personal, human relationships were vital and necessary in achieving political solutions to the city’s problems.34
Evelyn Richmond’s professional example helped shape her daughter Estelle in other ways, including her passions for women’s health, families and children, and her professional focus on political organizing, what Estelle later called “Networking,” during the 1960s. Mrs. Richmond’s capacity for connecting people, socially and politically, may have inspired Estelle, in part, to incorporate these personal qualities into her work during the War on Poverty era. Mrs. Richmond’s work with Estelle also represented a passing of sorts from her Progressive-era generation to her daughter’s, the next generation of urban activists from the 1960s onward. Watching and working with Evelyn may have imparted upon Estelle the progressive idealism that motivated her own civic passion for Trenton and community organizing well into the 1960s and beyond. Although this attitude tempered and evolved with the passing years, its core value, optimism, remained intact until the day she died.35
32 Adams, Ruth Richmond, “Memoir in “Class of 1959.” City College Fund. <http://www.citycollegefund.org/pdf/WhoWho/1959.pdf>
33 Robinson, Eve. “Photo,” email message to author, March 16, 2018; also, Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.
34 Joy Robinson-Lynch; also, Eve Robinson, interviews with author.
35 Ann M. Wilson, interview with author.

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Reflecting on her own life and upbringing, Ruth Richmond Adams credited her sister and brother-in-law with continuing Evelyn and Israel Richmond’s legacy of humanitarian service and advocacy in the city. “My sister, Estelle, and her husband, Dr. Irving Robinson, carried on this work in the name of our parents,” she wrote. “They upheld the same traditions.”36
36 Adams, “Memoir.” Ruth Richmond Adams, also inspired by her mother, forged an accomplished career in education and public service. After graduating from Radcliffe College in 1940, she completed her Masters in Education (1959) at City College of New York, before earning a PhD. in Educational Psychology (1965) at New York University. She spent her career as an educator in New York City, first for the Board of Education, and later at City College of New York, where she retired as Associate Dean of the School of Education.


Image 3: The Richmond women, ca. 1960; (L to R) Estelle, her mother Evelyn, and sister Ruth. Estelle always cited her mother’s example as a personal and professional inspiration for her own career.


Image 4: “Estelle and Irving” at home, Passover, late 1960s. The picture captures the couple’s spirit: kind, generous, and fun-loving.

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Caring for the Community
Irving W. Robinson, Estelle once remarked, “was the perfect mate,” a kind, attentive, husband, whose longtime companionship she credited for having “a very, very happy life.”37 Tall, bespectacled, with a gentle smile, one family friend remembered Dr. Robinson as a “prince,” a doting husband and father, and a well-respected pediatrician “beloved by generations of mothers in Trenton.”38 Irving was six years Estelle’s senior, grew up in Lakewood, New Jersey, and attended City College of New York before pursuing a graduate career in pediatric medicine. The couple first met through mutual friends during the mid 1940s, after he returned from overseas service in the Army Medical Corps. Irving was stationed at Fort Dix, and Estelle—a recent graduate of Cornell University—was working as a lab assistant in Trenton.39 The romantic attraction was, by her recollection, instant and mutual. Irving was “handsome and dashing,” she remembered. “He had sophisticated tastes in music, art, and literature and he was a leftist. If I had made him up, he would have been unchanged.”40
Within the year, the couple was engaged, and they married in June of 1946. After living together for one year in New York City, while Irving fulfilled his medical residency, they moved to New Haven, Connecticut where Dr. Robinson completed an externship at Yale University’s Clinic of Child Development under Dr. Arnold Gesell, a preeminent expert in “normative” child development. When Estelle became pregnant with their first child in 1947, she and Irving
37 Estelle. Directed by Ken Ross and Betsy Reed, Legacy Portrait Films, New York, NY, 2012. <https://vimeo.com/42199174>
38 Ann M. Wilson, interview with author.
39 “Irv Robinson, of West Tisbury, Dies at 93,” The Martha’s Vineyard Times, August 11, 2008; also Joy Robinson-Lynch, and Eve Robinson, interviews with author.
40 Robinson-Lynch, Joy. “List of Items-Misc. Writings by Estelle Robinson,” email message to author, March 20, 2018.

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decided to return to Trenton to raise a family and open their own pediatric practice.41 The following year, the couple purchased a large, stately Victorian home at 835 West State Street, blocks from Estelle’s childhood home, where they lived for the next 36 years, raised three daughters: Amy, Joy and Eve, and operated the family medical practice.
***
Estelle and Irving Robinson returned to Trenton during a pivotal time of expansion and growth. In 1949, the Saturday Evening Post described post-war Trenton as a boomtown whose “chief problem,” like many manufacturing cities, was “how to grow gracefully.” Yet, the magazine noted much of the growth was happening outside the city, not inside. Roebling, Lenox and other factories were humming, but upwardly mobile GIs—especially white and middle class families—moved in increasing numbers to the suburbs. One person told the magazine that “It is stylish to move out of town as soon as you make good in Trenton,” a trend that portended badly for the urban tax base, and the socio-economic diversity that allowed the city to thrive.42
However, in contrast with the white flight happening outside the city, the Robinsons “made good” in West Trenton, an urban, upper-middle-class community with a civic nexus. As one childhood friend of Estelle’s nostalgically recalled, post-war Trenton was an “Athens,” a city of middle class residents—black and white—joining organizations such as the PTA, the YMCA, the local church, synagogue or book club.43 The neighborhood civic tradition created a local
41 Ibid, interview with author; Additional biographical information comes from “Irv Robinson, of West Tisbury, Dies at 93.” Exactly why the Robinsons chose to open a practice and raise a family in Trenton, not New York or New Haven, remains unclear. Estelle told her daughters about political reasons related to hospital privileges, but her children think it may have also been related to her desire to remain close to her parents, specifically her mother.
42 Morris, Joe Alex, “The Cities of America: Trenton,” The Saturday Evening Post, October 1, 1949.
43 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.

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social cohesion and community pride that made Trenton attractive for many young families, including the Robinsons, who believed civic participation was an “expectation.” “My mother grew up among the civically engaged, and she carried on,” recalls Joy Robinson-Lynch. “It was just what you did.”44
Yet, there was also a strong political dimension to the couple’s civic activity, grounded in their shared interest in social justice, racial and economic equality. During the 1950s Trenton remained a hyper-segregated city, with de facto residential segregation by race, ethnicity and class, and racial and economic disparities between groups such as African Americans, Jews, Puerto Ricans, Italians, Poles and Hungarians. The couple saw civic participation as a political statement against these inequalities, a community mechanism to help organize individuals in groups, while empowering people to collectively advocate for “fairer” democratic principles.45 Estelle and Irving shared what they described as “leftist” or “left wing Democrat” views, and both dabbled in socialist and communist politics as college students.46 These leftist ideologies— and the liberal, New Deal-era strain of Democratic politics from their early adulthoods emphasizing justice and equality—resonated with their passions for human values, and “what government could do for people,” including policies that “equalized things in a democracy” for the poor, the marginalized and the vulnerable.47
44 Ibid.
45 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.
46 These quotations come from Estelle Robinson’s personal journals excerpted in, Robinson-Lynch, Joy. “List of Items-Misc. Writings by Estelle Robinson,” email to author. The author was unable to visit these documents, now in the possession of her daughter living in Massachusetts, and so she transcribed excerpts and sent them via email. Additional background information about the Robinson’s political views comes from, Joy Robinson-Lynch and Eve Robinson, interviews with author.
47 Arthur Finkle, interview with author, September 24, October 16, 2016; March 10, 2017; February 16, 2018; Also Joy Robinson-Lynch interview with author. During the years before the legislation for Medicare and Medicaid, Estelle and Irving would, on occasion, make available

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The city’s inequities, exacerbated by white flight, galvanized the Robinsons’ political activity during the 1950s. As established, middle class Trentonians, Eve Robinson recalls her parents—Irving as a licensed medical professional, and Estelle as a born and bred resident—felt a “responsibility” to help “care for the community,” and fight poverty, hunger and homelessness, while advocating for basic services all residents may have needed, such as healthcare and education.48 During the 1950s, the Robinsons joined and led city organizations such as the family practice, Youth Aliyah, Hadassah, Planned Parenthood, the Florence Crittenton Home, and the Junior High School No. 3 PTA, that helped administer or champion programs for families and children.49 Juanita Faulkner, whose family grew up with Dr. Robinson as their pediatrician, recalled the couple’s universal passion for these issues. “They were ahead of their time and were really very brave to take on the social ills of the community,” she says. “We often shake our heads and talk. The Robinsons not only did that, but took action.”50
As Estelle’s public career blossomed in Trenton—the PTA, the Board of Education, Rutgers University—she and Irving relied upon each other for professional advice and support. “My parents were co-activists,” remembers Joy Robinson-Lynch. “They shared political and philosophical views, discussing everything. I couldn’t tell you where one’s thoughts ended and the other’s began.”51 Together, the couple worked as an activist unit, leveraging Irving’s medical expertise with Estelle’s gift for politically organizing people during the 1950s and 1960s.52 “He
their home to neighbors, friends and relatives who were “down on their luck,” people who were elderly, homeless, or needed a place to stay. It was a part of what Eve Robinson called her parents’ belief in a “responsibility to care for the community.”
48 Eve Robinson, interview with author.
49 Ibid.
50 Juanita Faulkner, interview with author, February 13, 2018.
51 Robinson-Lynch, Joy “Re: New Discovery,” email message to author, February 12, 2018.
52 Arthur Finke, interview with author.

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was on boards, she was on boards, and together, they would bridge the disconnect,” Joy recalls. On projects in Trenton, such as early childhood education, Project Head Start, and Networking, they were a collaborative team: personal companions, political allies and professional colleagues.
When, on May 28, 1958, the parents at Junior High School No. 3, the local elementary and junior high school, elected “Mrs. Irving Robinson” to the PTA presidency, it was her first career breakthrough, the first time she led an organization where she could work to develop public policies and affect policy changes in the city. 53 As Estelle was sworn-in on the auditorium stage, a special Western Union telegram arrived, addressed “Mrs. Estelle Robinson.” It was from Irving. Years later, she saved the note as a memento from those early days:
“Reassuring to know my children will have benefit PTA headed outstandingly. Assure you my hearty support.
Everlasting love,
Irving Robinson, MD”54
Irving’s note epitomized the couple’s egalitarian marriage, their collaboration, and personal respect for each other as partners and co-activists. Together, through a shared interest in people, they became well-known, respected local advocates for families, healthcare and education.
The 1950s and the next decade, the ‘Turbulent ‘60s,’ provided Estelle and Irving Robinson their share of political triumphs— civil rights, education reforms, anti-poverty programs, Project Head Start—and disappointments—conservative backlash, Vietnam, polarization and violence. Yet, social justice and community remained inherent to their civic participation in Trenton. Inherent was also the Robinsons’ shared commitment to human values, political values Estelle once described as “set on human considerations and on consideration of the quality of life. Values based on understanding each other and a discovery of a unity of
53 “Receives Orchid,” Trenton Evening Times, June 5, 1958.
54 Robinson, Irving. Telegram to Estelle Robinson, May 28, 1958. From Estelle and Irving Robinson Papers, personal collection of Joy Robinson-Lynch.

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purpose of all citizens.”55 Working as an unpaid, volunteer public servant in the Trenton Public Schools, she developed these beliefs into practice, organizing residents around education and working to connect parents with policymakers during the 1950s and 1960s.
55 Robinson, Estelle Richmond. Untitled speech, manuscript, Summer 1969. From Alexander Library, Rutgers University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964-2001. (accessed February 1, 2017)

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Background: Trenton’s “Crisis in Education”
The Junior 3 PTA, and later, the Trenton Board of Education, provided Estelle Robinson the vital career opportunities she needed to test her ideas about political organizing and how it could affect policy reforms before the Great Society. She assumed the Junior 3 PTA presidency during the middle of the post-World War II “Crisis in Education,” a nation-wide debate, in part, about segregation and inequality in American public education.
In 1955, Rudolf Flesch, a prominent reading expert published the book Why Johnny Can’t Read, a pedagogical study that argued American schools taught reading “all wrong,” and significantly underperformed with comparable institutions in other developed countries.56 The book was released shortly after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision and touched a political nerve with the American public, sparking fierce controversy about the relationship between civil rights and education. “Certainly,” the public intellectual Hannah Arendt wrote at the time, “more is involved here than the puzzling question of why Johnny can’t read.”57 With civil rights demonstrations happening in the South, Flesch’s book provided a timely focus on the modern social, economic and political problems inherent within American education. Experts had used the phrase “crisis in education” as early as 1949, but Why Johnny Can’t Read solidified its place in post-war, American vernacular as a catch-all for the institutional racism, de facto segregation, social and economic inequality that persisted after the formal end to “separate but equal” doctrine.58
56 Golub, Adam. “Solving the School Crisis in Popular Culture: Why Johnny Can’t Read Turns 60,” Ethos: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities, and Public Ethics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2015.
57 Arendt, Hannah. “The Crisis in Education,” 1954. <http://learningspaces.org/files/ArendtCrisisInEdTable.pdf>
58 Goulb, “Solving the School Crisis in Popular Culture.”

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For years, Trenton had been front and center to this political “crisis” in public education. City schools had been segregated by race until the Hedgepeth-Williams v. Board of Education decision, a 1943 lawsuit two African American mothers and Trenton’s local NAACP branch filed against the school district. In 1944, the Supreme Court of New Jersey sided with the plaintiffs, and ruled to end legalized racial segregation in New Jersey, a precedent cited in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision.59 Yet, even after the state and federal court decisions, Trenton Public Schools, like many urban districts during the 1950s, remained informally segregated by race, ethnicity and class. The district’s “neighborhood schools” policy—drawing district boundaries to follow neighborhood boundaries—reinforced de facto residential segregation and ensured a segregated system until the high school level.60
Trenton’s Central High School, described some years later by the city’s Human Relations Council as “desegregated but not truly integrated,” embodied the entire system’s inherent contradictions and flaws.61 On one end of the spectrum, the high school enjoyed a “highly academic” reputation, sending a steady stream of graduates—predominantly white, affluent students from established families—to Ivy League and other high-caliber universities.62 There were nationally-ranked debate and forensics programs and an extensive selection of accredited college prep courses available to these students.63 On the other end, a noticeable achievement gap existed between white students and black students that discouraged the latter from pursing
59 Blackwell, Jon. “1943: School Spirit,” Capital Century Project, The Trentonian, 2000. <http://capitalcentury.com/1943.html>
60 Arthur Finkle, interview with author.
61 “Complete Text of THS Study Report: City Human Relations Council Receives Findings of Panel.” Trenton Evening Times, July 15, 1968, p. 7D.
62 Eve Robinson, interview with author.
63 City of Trenton. “1965 Annual Report City of Trenton New Jersey,” Trenton Evening Times, April 10, 1965, 6.

the same educational opportunities as the former. An institutional “tracking” system funneled disproportionate numbers of working class students of color, many from recent Southern migrant families, into the vocational or remedial programs rather than college prep.64 Hurt, humiliated, and often ignored by academic administrators, without the educational resources they needed to succeed, many black students suffered in indignity, while some left Trenton High altogether.65 The high school’s educational disparities—in funding, achievement, and physical facilities— elicited intense social and political tensions, and demonstrated the tangible results of a separate, unequal school system for all Trenton youth.66
The “Crisis in Education” and the issues it embodied, white flight, a shrinking tax base, institutional racism and inequality, continued into the 1960s, establishing the political context for Estelle Robinson’s early public career. The school system’s separate, unequal status quo reinforced the “crisis” of racial tension, and culminated with spontaneous unrest and protests at Trenton High School during 1967 and 1968. Ever present, these conditions defined Estelle’s organizing efforts, first at the PTA, and later, the Board of Education.

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64 A Game of Inches. Directed by Andie Ayala and Tylor Johnson, The Trenton Project, The Trustees of Princeton University, 2017. < http://www.thetrentonproject.com/copy-of-2015­ 6projects>
5 Ibid. Also, Farrell, Gregory. “Crisis in Education Is Nothing New in Trenton,” Trenton Evening Times, January 20, 1964.
66 Arthur Finkle, interview with author.

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Demanding the Best in Education
In response to the Crisis in Education, Estelle Robinson developed her first major organizing project, a city-wide PTA summit, as PTA president of Junior High School No. 3. Junior 3 was the Robinson family’s K-9 neighborhood school, located two blocks from their home on West State Street. During the 1950s, it enjoyed a reputation as one of Trenton’s flagship schools, and the PTA—with its large neighborhood membership and participation—wielded considerable political influence.67 In 1957, for example, after a child died crossing a new highway behind the school, the PTA lobbied and brokered a compromise agreement with New Jersey’s Department of Transportation to construct two neighborhood pedestrian overpasses. It was during this public campaign that Estelle first “cut her teeth” as a neighborhood organizer, leading parent meetings, collecting traffic data, contacting local and state automobile organizations, and meeting with DOT officials. The campaign’s success, her resourcefulness and zeal in organizing committees earned Estelle the respect of her peers, impressed the PTA leadership and ultimately resulted in her election to the PTA presidency.68
The ongoing “Crisis in Education” deeply unsettled Estelle Robinson, and she leveraged her new PTA position to speak out against Trenton’s educational inequalities. She wielded the power the presidency entitled and skillfully seized the political moment to advocate policy reforms. After attending one state conference on education, Robinson wrote a scathing letter in December 1958 to the Trenton Evening Times, criticizing state policymakers for their inaction to redress educational inequality. “The crisis in education,” she wrote, “which has been
67 Janis Kind interview with author, October 14, 21, 2016.
68 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author; Additional information about PTA campaign from, “Loggie Bound Skaters Dart Across E-W Road,” Trenton Evening Times, February 13, 1958.

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approaching for more than 10 years has arrived and the resulting situation no longer permits an adequate education for all of New Jersey’s children and youth.”
“This is shocking in the richest country in the world!
Communities do not educate children as a favor to parents.
We educate children because we need future generations of good, productive, intelligent citizens. Education is democracy’s most important asset.”
Ten years before the unrest at Trenton Central High School, Estelle Robinson’s letter provided a clarion call against inequality in the city’s public school system. It also launched her opening volley in the political fight against Trenton’s educational ills, advocating specific policy proposals such as progressive taxation, which she called “an intelligent program of tax revision” with “a broad-based system of taxation (sales or personal income tax),” to reform the existing funding system. Robinson’s argument that “education is democracy’s most important asset” echoed her political commitment to human values and the basic quality of life considerations inherent to all Trentonians. “It is time,” she wrote, “for the citizens of Trenton to let their state legislators know that they demand the best in education for their children.”69
Estelle Robinson soon mobilized the PTA’s political organization to advocate for educational reforms in Trenton. In November 1959, she convened and chaired, under auspices of the Junior 3 PTA Education Committee, a special policy summit on public education. The city­wide conference invited female PTA officials—black and white—from Trenton’s neighborhood districts, plus county and state representatives from the New Jersey Congress of Parents and Teachers and the Federation of District Boards of Education in New Jersey to develop a “list of qualifications” for Trenton school board appointees.70 Robinson also enjoyed the full political
69 Robinson, Estelle Richmond. “Money for Schools,” Trenton Evening Times, December 10, 1958.
70 “To Draw Qualifications List for School Board Candidates,” Trenton Evening Times, November 1, 1959; Demographic details come from, “Outline School Board Qualifications,” Trenton Evening Times, December 2, 1959.

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support of Mayor Arthur J. Holland, a liberal reformer and good government candidate elected that year to City Hall. Holland’s administration had legislated for changes to the city’s municipal charter including a “‘strong’ Mayor-council” government that would grant mayoral powers to appoint Board of Education candidates.71 The new charter increased the mayor’s political power and balanced Trenton’s Democratic machine, which had obstructed his past efforts to reform government practices. The policy change, combined with Holland’s progressive governing style, and his unconventional reputation as an honest, ethical politician created a real political opportunity for civil rights and educational reform.72
The Trenton Evening Times reported that the summit’s purpose was “to develop and promote a deeper and more widespread understanding of the purposes, achievements, problems and needs of the public schools.”73 Estelle Robinson’s motive in convening and chairing the meeting also reflected her passions for political organizing and social equality. She sought to connect the PTA women in a way that transcended neighborhood barriers of race, ethnicity and class, and organize them as one unified constituent group. As mothers, she believed these women shared a common interest in education for their children, and as members of the same organization, could work better together than separately. The strategy for “having more people
71 Elizabeth Holland, interview with author; Details about Holland’s support from, “To Draw Qualifications List for School Board Candidates.”
72 Arthur Finkle, interview with author. Finkle, a former city political operative, vividly recalls the Mayor’s honesty and high judgment: “He was one of the few—I count on a hand—honest politicians I ever met. He would go to a convention and would give back the city $1.35 and say, ‘I didn’t spend it.’ I’m not sure whether that was to be publicized—because he was a politician— but he was honest to a fault.” Recalls Bill Faherty, Holland’s political advisor, “Of course I’m prejudiced, butÉIÉnever [met] a more honest and dedicated person as that man, Arthur Holland.” Until his death in 1989, Holland was known to many New Jersey government officials for his high code of ethics. Today, Rutgers University’s Arthur J. Holland Program on Ethics in Government at the Eagleton Institute of Politics honors his contributions as a “proponent and practitioner of open, responsive, and ethical government.”
73“To Draw Qualifications List for School Board Candidates.”

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involved,” she wrote years later in A Guide to Networking, created “a better chance of providing solutions to the problem”—the 1959 “problem” being Trenton’s “Crisis in Education,” the “solution” being public policies that “demanded the best in education” for all city children.74
Estelle Robinson envisioned Trenton’s mothers as allies, not adversaries in this fight, and leveraged the PTA apparatus to organize their political power as one reform bloc. Years later, she wrote “A facilitator who makes the group feel that everyone has something to contribute provides a good start for the network’s growth. Once everyone is convinced that there is a common focus and that sharing ideas and information will enhance each agency’s role, the meeting will proceed well.”75 Her leadership during the 1959 summit did just that, helping the neighborhood women reach a basic political consensus on city “public education” (which they defined as “public and private schooling,” agreeing “that there is a place for both in our society.”)76 Robinson’s efforts also empowered the local women and recognized their collective power to affect change. As mothers, she believed these women were in a unique position to speak as educational advocates. “WomenÉare the most concerned about these human, yes humane aspects of our society and when they care enough, they will make things happen,” she later told a group of women educators, stressing the importance of female public leadership.77
The working group’s tangible result, the “list of suggested qualifications” for BOE candidates, helped define the ways in which Trenton’s educational leadership could be more inclusive, representative and equitable. This policy document—which the PTA later presented to Mayor Holland in a public ceremony—advocated the professionalization of board
74 Robinson, A Guide to Networking, p. 3.
75 Robinson, A Guide to Networking, p. 4.
76 “Outline School Board Qualifications,” Trenton Evening Times, December 2, 1959.
77 Robinson, Estelle Richmond. Untitled speech, manuscript, Summer 1969.

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appointments and nominees with “a repeated and a genuine interest in public education,” the ability to “think comprehensively and constructively about community problems,” the “moral stamina to take courageous action, despite pressure groups,” and a “capacity for human understanding.” In accepting the criteria, Holland promised the group he would “name people whose qualifications include these points,” and referenced the policy document to diversify leadership on the nine-member Trenton Board of Education.78
Mayor Holland used the PTA criteria as a basis to work with neighborhood groups in selecting quality, professional candidates for the job, including women.79 The criteria, according to one political operative, gave the Mayor an explicit mandate to “clean up” board patronage, and added credibility to his efforts to appoint “good people,” male and female, rather than “hacks.”80 From 1960-1966, during his first tenure in office, Holland appointed three female members—Helen P. Solon in 1960, Estelle Robinson in 1961, and Helen W. Green in 1963—the board’s first women to serve. The trio stood out as highly qualified, well-respected, upright leaders in their neighborhood communities. Solon was a real estate broker in West Trenton, and an active civic leader who became the BOE’s first female president in 1964. Green was a social worker and public school teacher, Trenton’s first African American educator assigned outside the segregated Lincoln School, and the first black female appointed to the school board. Together, the three women lent a professional, dignified presence to the board during the 1960s and helped trail-blaze opportunities for other female public leaders in Trenton.81
78 “Outline School Board Qualifications,” Trenton Evening Times, December 2, 1959.
79 Elizabeth Holland, interview with author.
80 Arthur Finkle, interview with author.
81 Personal composites of Helen Solon and Helen Green draw from recollections by Arthur Finkle, Elizabeth Holland, Juanita Faulkner, Joy Robinson-Lynch and Eve Robinson; Additional information about Solon comes from, “First Woman: Mrs. Solon Elected School Board Head,”

Estelle Robinson’s PTA presidency and the policy reforms she helped enact demonstrated her ability as a “natural networker,” someone, she once said, who effectively organizes and reads, listens and communicates with people.81 “Estelle’s gift of bringing diverse groups of people together was extraordinary,” recalls her Rutgers University colleague and longtime friend Ann Wilson. “She was just brilliant in her ability to relate to people. She made you feel like you were the only one in the room. When she was talking to you, you were the best thing on Earth.”82 Robinson’s interpersonal skills inherently formed the basis for her career as an organizer and political activist focused on “Networking” people with public policies. These qualities, which she put forth at the PTA, ultimately earned her the Board of Education appointment in January 1961.

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81 Robinson, A Guide to Networking, 4.
82 Ann Wilson, interview with author.

Image 5: Trenton’s PTA Committee presents Mayor Arthur Holland its school board selection criteria, December 1, 1959. Organizing the PTA summit, which developed the criteria, helped earn Estelle her own school board appointment in 1961.


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“A Female Art Holland”
One day in late 1960, Mayor Holland called Estelle Robinson at her home to schedule a meeting about school board appointments. Board vacancies, the Mayor said, were opening in early 1961 and he wanted to solicit Estelle’s personal advice, as a former PTA president and organizer, for “who to appoint.” She and Irving took the assignment seriously, and spent hours preparing for Holland’s visit to their home. “I can remember my father and mother talking,” says Joy Robinson-Lynch, “asking ‘Who should we recommend to be on the board?’ It had to be someone who lived within the city boundary and they got a map to see if ‘so and so’ lived in Trenton.” And, yet, unknown to both Estelle and Irving, Holland’s consultation was a ruse. “It was very coy of him,” she says, “He was really interviewing her.”84
In many ways, Estelle Robinson and Arthur Holland were similar political personalities: lifelong public servants, liberal reform Democrats, and political idealists with high ethical standards for government. Estelle’s work at Junior 3 had caught Holland’s attention, and he was “impressed” with her public leadership and organizing abilities. “Estelle was fine, principled, intelligent and really committed to what she was doing,” recalls Elizabeth Holland, the Mayor’s widow. Whatever Art and Estelle said during their first private meeting at the house has been lost to history, but it seemed to confirm his public support for her appointment. The pair hit it off, and thereafter, the Mayor held her in the highest personal and professional regard. At one point, he even told his wife that he thought Robinson was “a female Art Holland.” “He thought of Estelle as someone having the same ethical standards as he did,” Betty recalls.85
84 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author. Estelle’s initial introduction to Holland may have been facilitated through Deputy Mayor William S. Faherty, Holland’s political confidant and campaign manager, who grew up in West Trenton and knew the Richmond family.
85 Elizabeth Holland, interview with author.

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When the Mayor surprised Estelle Robinson and phoned again in January 1961 to say “I want you,” her appointment was a proud moment for the entire family. The Robinson daughters recall their mother and father were both “excited,” “thrilled,” and “very proud.”85 Estelle also called her own mother, Evelyn Richmond, to tell her the good news and lamented “that her father didn’t [live to] see it” because he too, she thought, would have been “so proud.” Robinson was very excited to work with the Mayor, in part, because she respected his professional, ethical conduct and passion for public service. “My mother admired Art Holland,” recalls Joy Robinson-Lynch. “He loved the City of Trenton and was committed to making it better. An incredibly honest, incredibly clean politician with nothing but good intent. And so, she really could work with him.” Estelle’s BOE appointment helped cement an enduring friendship between the two— personal, professional, and political—that continued until Art’s death in 1989.86
The close political alliance that Estelle Robinson developed during this time with Mayor Holland would intertwine her Trenton public career with his until 1966, when Holland lost re­election and Robinson left city politics to work full-time at Rutgers University. However, the two three-year appointed terms Estelle spent on Mayor Holland’s board from 1961-1967, provided her the professional experience she needed to develop Networking after the “long, hot Summer” of 1967. At the beginning of second-wave feminism, Art Holland also “had her back,” politically advocating for Estelle’s leadership when she was vulnerable to sexual harassment and discrimination on the Board.87 The Mayor’s early support for Robinson during these incidents, such as one in 1962 that involved hiring for a new school superintendent, helped legitimize her policymaking role and gave her the professional credibility she needed to pursue an independent career in public service.

86 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.
87 Ibid.
85 Joy Robinson-Lynch and Eve Robinson, interviews with author.

Image 6: Estelle is sworn in for her first board term, January 31, 1961. She
later recalled this event as one of the proudest moments of her career.


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Building Her ‘Own’ Name
With Mayor Holland next to her, her husband Irving, and their three daughters watching from the audience, Estelle Robinson took the BOE oath on January 31, 1961 in a public ceremony that she later regarded as one of her proudest career moments.88 A newspaper photograph from the ceremony, shows Estelle solemnly repeating the oath, her right hand raised as the city clerk certified her as Trenton’s second female school board member. The image also shows Estelle taking the oath surrounded by men, a visual allusion to the social politics of second-wave feminism, a national movement whose arc paralleled her own board appointment and public career.
When Robinson first assumed office, few women held public leadership positions in Trenton and institutional sexism on the Board of Education hindered her ability to serve effectively. She was an outspoken and articulate woman, her daughters recall, and some male board members “did not like” these qualities, which they believed challenged their professional and personal authority. According to Eve Robinson, these men “did not think women should be in a position of power,” and repeatedly sought to undermine Estelle’s credibility, either by obstructing, ignoring, or belittling her.89 “She had a lot of stories as a woman being denigrated by older men on the board,” recalls Joy Robinson-Lynch. “They did not want to give her power, and she had to really assert herself strongly in order not to be stepped aside.”90
The gendered power struggles between Estelle Robinson and her male opponents surfaced as early as her first board meeting on February 1, when she clashed with the BOE
88 Eve Robinson, interview with author. The attendance information comes from “New School Board Members Sworn,” photograph in Trenton Evening Times, February 1, 1961, and Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.
89 Eve Robinson, interview with author.
90 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.

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President Eugene T. Urbaniak about committee assignments. “Newly-seated member Mrs. Irving Robinson was appointed to the finance and supplies committees,” Trenton Evening Times reported, but “she promptly objected, saying she preferred to be on the instruction committee.”
“[Board President] Urbaniak said he might shift assignments but pointed out that committee assignments are made largely on the basis of seniority. Mrs. Helen Perlee-Solon offered to let Mrs. Robinson have her place on the instruction committee, but no decision was made.”91
Instruction had been Estelle’s policy specialty at the PTA and it made sense for her to request that committee assignment. At Junior 3, she chaired the PTA’s “School Education Committee” after her presidency ended and she represented herself in that capacity during the 1959 PTA Summit, the event that inspired her board appointment. Urbaniak, however, seemed to ignore these qualifications, appointed her to a committee that she seemed to have no interest or specialty in, and refused her own request “on the basis of seniority.”
Estelle Robinson’s lack of board experience may, in part, have legitimately justified the President’s rationale for her assignment, but her “prompt” objection and Helen Solon’s involvement also suggest how the confrontation may have been gendered. Solon supported Robinson’s bid to change the committee assignment and it seems significant that she, the other female board member, stepped in to help. The story offers a tantalizing lens into the early political difficulties Estelle would describe to her children. The euphoria in which her pubic career started seemed to dissipate, as she struggled her first year in office to achieve an equal, professional footing with men in board policymaking.92
The escalating tensions between Estelle Robinson and her board opponents erupted in one climactic confrontation during early 1962, when Trenton commenced the search for a new public school superintendent. In August 1961, the previous superintendent Dr. Richard R.
91 “Urbaniak, Bodine on Estimate Board,” Trenton Evening Times, February 2, 1961.
92 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.

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Robinson (no relation to Estelle or Irving), abruptly resigned and took a disability pension. His successor, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Sarah C. Christie, served as interim superintendent during the 1961-62 academic year and newspapers reported her as the leading candidate. However, Christie—a respected, veteran educator and academic administrator in Trenton­ ultimately informed “the school board she [did] not want to be considered for the post” because she was “more interested in continuing to concentrate on the field of curriculum development rather than general administration.”93 Christie’s declaration, which was to be publicized in March 1962, made it necessary for the Board of Education to commence a widespread search for candidates inside and outside the district. In response to this need, the new Board of Education president Leon L. Levy sought to organize a special “evaluation committee” to screen and select the pool of applicants.94
The confrontation occurred when Estelle Robinson asked Leon Levy to join the new evaluation committee and the Board President refused her request. Robinson’s account survives through her daughters, who separately recall her telling the story as an example of the sexual harassment she experienced on the BOE. Eve Robinson remembers Estelle saying Leon Levy harbored a strong personal contempt for her and was one of the men who believed she “should [not] be in a position of power.” When Estelle asked for the committee assignment, Levy rebuffed her, allegedly saying “What would you know about interviewing people, except for interviewing maids?” The comment implied that, as a woman, Estelle “was 'just' a housewife and never really had experience with job interviews, except hiring a 'maid' to do her housework.” Humiliated, and infuriated, she then “got up, left the room and would not come back to the
93 “Miss Christie Will Not Seek Top School Post,” Trenton Evening Times, March 14, 1962.
94 Ibid.

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meeting.”96 In a moment of political calculus, she also may have also threatened to resign, and refused to participate in board functions until certain members in question—specifically Levy— treated her with more dignity and respect.97 It was Estelle’s most forceful protest yet against the mistreatment she received.
Word of the confrontation quickly spread to Art Holland who, under unusual political circumstances, intervened on Estelle Robinson’s behalf.98 “Levy had to call her later and apologize,” Eve Robinson recalls. “My father did not want my mother to accept the apology, but she did.”99 In making political amends, Levy—possibly under Holland’s direction—also appointed Estelle to the superintendent committee, as Vice Chair.100 The political outcome, and
96 Eve Robinson, interview with author. “I do remember this [story] clearly,” Eve says, “because she [my mother had] just told me the story again in 2013 or 2014 when we were driving to Martha's Vineyard.”
97 It is unclear whether Estelle actually tendered her resignation. However, the recollection that she “would not come back to the meeting” may obliquely reference such a scenario.
98 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author. As Mayor, Art Holland had the power to appoint candidates, but according to Betty Holland, believed in upholding the political independence between his office and the Board of Education. Aside from appointments, he generally wouldn’t interfere in board affairs, as it created bad political precedent. Estelle’s situation, therefore, may have been serious if the Mayor intervened on her behalf.
99 “Politics makes strange bedfellows,” remarks Arthur Finkle, who professionally knew both characters and recalls their clashing personalities. Estelle Robinson, he says, was warm, affable and idealistic, while Leon Levy “butted heads with a lot of people,” was abrasive, difficult and realistic. However, both were Jewish community leaders and liberals allied with Art Holland. Moreover, they were committed public servants and cared deeply, albeit in different ways, for Trenton. Levy, for instance, was a prominent lawyer—a shrewd labor negotiator—and wrote the Articles of Incorporation for United Progress, Inc., Trenton’s Community Action Agency. Holland, who usually maintained political independence from board affairs, may have
recognized a breach in his coalition and intervened to keep the peace, reminding the pair they were on the same side. “I don’t think they were that philosophically different,” Finkle says, “I just think they didn’t get along.” With this specific incident, however, he does think there was “probably in Leon’s mind—a sexist overtone, but he wouldn’t [have] acknowledge[d] that.”
100 “Miss Christie Will Not Seek Top School Post.” The committee, the newspaper reported, was “headed by Dr. Roscoe West [ex-president of Trenton State College], with Mrs. Estelle Robinson as vice chairman. Other members are Dr. Arthur Thomas and Eugene T. Urbaniak, with [Leon] Levy as an ex-officio member.”

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the way Robinson leveraged her position to stand up for herself, demonstrated her skill as a shrewd operative and negotiator. Although she may have been an idealist, she was one with practical, even calculated political instincts. “That [story] sounds like Estelle,” says Ann Wilson, noting her friend “did not suffer fools gladly.” An effective strategist, Robinson could read people, understand and anticipate their roles in larger bureaucratic systems, a skill that later helped her envision the concept for Networking. In this situation, she forced her opponent’s hand by leveraging her political power against his. Her gifts for politics and big-picture thinking made her a visionary, even if she didn’t always receive the recognition. “She had a mind like a steel trap, encased in this lovely... look,” Ann says. “I think sometimes people didn’t expect or give credit, you know.”101
The 1962 committee appointment, however, bestowed one vital credit to Estelle Robinson: the professional recognition of her own name. Press coverage of the event identified her as “vice chairman...Mrs. Estelle Robinson,” not “Mrs. Irving Robinson” which previous articles had used to describe her position on the BOE.102 “Women were never referred to by their 'own' names back then,” remembers Eve Robinson. “My mom was always labeled
‘Mrs. Irving Robinson.’ Only after you were a 'widow' could you use your 'own' name if you were a married woman.”103 This specific coverage indicated a small, but significant change, giving Estelle the agency and authority she needed in local policymaking to pursue her own, independent public career.
101 Ann Wilson, interview with author.
102 “Miss Christie Will Not Seek Top School Post.”
103 Robinson, Eve. “Thank you and Some New Discoveries...,” email message to author, December 6, 2016.


Image 7: Trenton Public School administrators, ca. 1962. Standing (L-R), John D. Harvey, Secretary, Trenton Board of Education, Thor Pearson, Trenton Board of Education, Dr. Sarah C. Christie, Assistant Superintendent of Schools, unidentified, Leon L. Levy, President, Trenton Board of Education; Sitting (L-R), unidentified teacher, Dr. Richard T. Beck, Superintendent of Schools, unidentified teacher, Estelle R. Robinson, Trenton Board of Education. Beck was hired that year by the BOE’s Superintendent’s Evaluation Committee, to which Robinson and Levy belonged. The corsages indicate this particular event may be a hiring or faculty awards ceremony.

Image 8: The Board of Education debates teacher’s pay, February 1962. As Trenton’s
school system struggled with shrinking tax revenues and tighter budgets, local newspapers reported Estelle remained a strong public advocate for raising teacher salaries.


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Rising to the Challenge
Estelle Robinson’s appointment as Vice Chair also gave her an influential voice in hiring Trenton’s new Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Richard T. Beck, a like-minded advocate for progressive school taxation and closing the achievement gap. Beck was a past president of the New Jersey Education Association, and worked as Superintendent of Schools in Irvington, New Jersey, where he said his “particular interest was in developing the curriculum so that it would serve best the varying needs of pupils of differing levels of economic and educational status.” Upon taking charge of the district, he said the superintendent’s job would be a “great challenge.” “Trenton, I believe,” he told the Trenton Times, “is ready to move forward as a city under its new Mayor and council and as a school system under its dedicated Board of Education. With the help of the staff, the Board of Education, and the people of Trenton, I will devote myself to bringing to Trenton the very best in education for its young people,” he pledged.103
As early as his hiring in 1962, both Dr. Beck and Assistant Superintendent Dr. Sarah Christie recognized the “overwhelming” political urgency to accommodate “accelerated social change”—white flight, poverty, racial and economic inequality—in Trenton’s Public Schools.104 Writing in 1965 to Robinson and her BOE colleagues, Beck said his administration’s first three years had been “most difficult.” “Problems of poverty and underprivilege, mental health, ethnic recognition, family-life education, urban renewal and civil rights are a few of the many impacts being felt by the Trenton Public Schools,” the superintendent noted. However, despite these
103 “New Superintendent of Schools Sees ‘Great Challenge’ Facing Him Here,” Trenton Evening Times, June 15, 1962.
104 Beck, Dr. Richard T. “Narrative Report & Statistics, 1962-1965,” Superintendent of Schools, Trenton, New Jersey, 1965. From collection of Eve Robinson. By 1963, the district was almost evenly divided between black and white enrollment. 11 of Trenton’s 21 schools were majority African American, and overall, there were 8,135 black and 8,323 white students matriculating, an approximate 49-51 percent split.

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challenges, Dr. Beck, Dr. Christie and other leaders including Estelle hoped Trenton could leverage its schools as a catalyst for revitalization. “As a school system,” the superintendent wrote, “we have been aggressive in seeking Federal support for new programs and are on the forefront of the anti-poverty program.”105 The city’s leaders hoped these programs, financed in-part by the federal government, would accomplish two major policy goals: retaining white, middle class families in Trenton, while working to equalize educational opportunities for the growing low-income, minority population.106
Trenton’s lofty, ambitious educational agenda coincided with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, a comprehensive federal program that funded many of the city’s projects during the 1960s. Working with federal and state officials, Trenton’s educational leaders sought to innovate programs that would distinguish their community as a national leader for excellence and achievement. From 1964-1966, Estelle and Irving Robinson participated in the city’s War on Poverty as local and state policy advisers for Project Head Start, a federally funded pre-school program for low-income children. This work formalized Estelle’s public role as an information facilitator, and gave her the vital experience necessary to develop Networking as a grass roots organizing strategy later in the decade.
105 Ibid.
106 Ibid. Dr. Beck initially believed enforced desegregation would be a vital component of such efforts. “The Negro population,” he told the Board of Education in 1963, was “growing larger each year and he wonders whether there is any solution to the segregation problem.” During the Board’s June 18th meeting, the Trenton Evening Times reported the superintendent proposed building a new school on North Clinton Avenue, “plus some other school changes, [that] would relieve the present segregation problem.” The changes included transitioning Junior High School No. 5 from an “elementary-junior high set up” into “an elementary school.” The board agreed in principle to this idea, but members, including Estelle, expressed reservations about details of the plan. She “questioned” whether “the State Department of Education would approve the McClellan School site anyway, because it might continue the presently-claimed ‘de facto segregation.’” Mayor Holland, in attendance, added that re-districting schools created political “headache and expense,” and he believed “the only real answer to the school board’s segregation problems is through residential integration.”


Image 9: Irving Robinson articulated his vision for a comprehensive pre-school program for low-income children in an April 1963 conference paper. Many friends, relatives and colleagues insist this document helped “invent” Project Head Start. Today, it is difficult to substantiate those claims, in part, because only the title page survives. “Deprived children” was the era’s accepted Academy of American Pediatrics vernacular for low-income and special needs children. The undated, handwritten note was attached by Estelle Robinson.

Image 10: Estelle is sworn in for her second board term, January 21, 1964.


Image 11: Networking at Rutgers University, January 1965. Estelle started work at Rutgers through a 1964 Ford Foundation fellowship and remained there as an Urban Agent until 1968. She later joined the university’s faculty and rose to become a tenured professor in the School of Social Work, where she remained until retirement in the late 1980s.



Image 12: Trenton Board of Education, 1965-1966. Standing (L-R), John D. Harvey, Secretary, Dr. Angelo J. Migliori, M.D., Jasper R. Massari, President, Eugene T. Urbaniak, Thor Pearson, Harry J. Bodine; Sitting (L-R), Estelle R. Robinson, Vice President, Helen P. Solon, Helen W. Green, Dr. Roscoe L. West. This group represented the culmination of Art Holland’s efforts to professionalize and diversify the Board of Education. Using the PTA criteria, the Mayor selected new board appointees that included its first three women to serve.

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Working to Close the Gap
By mid-1965, federal anti-poverty funds were pouring into Trenton, so much that Estelle Robinson recalled the activity “made us [Irving and I] believe that a war on poverty was being waged.”108 The Robinsons perceived the War on Poverty as “another New Deal,” and were thrilled about the political opportunities—and ample funds—it provided to enact lasting, policy changes in Trenton.109 Trenton’s “war” on poverty, she said, was a means to an end, a concerted attack against “racial tension” that had been motivated by the “prolonged period of [civil rights] marches, sit-ins, and other forms of protests by the Negro community.” The couple believed “the War on Poverty and these protests were indisputably related,” and saw the political momentum in their own community as a new opportunity to legislate pre-school programs, a policy item they had long-advocated in Trenton.110

108 Robinson, Estelle Richmond. Untitled speech, manuscript, Summer 1969.
Estelle and Irving Robinson’s interest in early childhood education dated to the 1940s when Irving completed his medical externship at Yale University. Dr. Robinson’s studies with Dr. Arnold Gesell, the originator of normative child study, made him one of New Jersey’s first, if not first, pediatric specialists educated in this field. Normative study focused on pediatric intervention and viewed a child’s learning development through a set of fundamental stages. If a child did not meet one of these stages by a specified age, Dr. Robinson argued medical intervention was necessary to prevent them from falling behind. “Childhood is life and should not just be considered as preparation for life,” he said during the 1950s. “Strong forces [are] at
109 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.
110 Robinson, Estelle Richmond. Untitled speech, manuscript, Summer 1969.

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work in the child working towards his development and it only [takes] an occasional push from the outside to guide him along the proper way.”111
The normative way of thinking, in turn, inspired Irving and Estelle Robinson’s vision for a pre-school program in Trenton. They called pre-school “a pediatric approach to an urgent social problem,” and argued during the 1950s and early 1960s that it could help wavering cities like Trenton close the achievement gap.112 Juanita Faulkner, who taught in Trenton’s schools during this time, recalls Dr. Robinson “seemed to have been thinking about these things long before they became popular.” “He was right on target,” she says “understanding the activities and physical functions a child was capable of doing at certain ages...He felt early education would give children from [low-income] urban environments the chance to become better equipped for their formal entrance to school, more on par with their affluent and suburban counterparts.”113
Irving articulated his vision in an April 1963 conference paper titled “A Pre-School Program for Deprived Children: A Pediatric Approach to an Urgent Social Problem.” This important medical and policy document preceded the Great Society and earned the Robinsons early recognition for their efforts to close the achievement gap.114 Years later, relatives, friends,
111 “Doctor Urges ‘Real Living’ for Children,” undated news clipping from Estelle and Irving Robinson Papers, personal collection of Joy Robinson-Lynch. Based on details within the article, the content probably dates from the mid-late 1950s.
112 Robinson, Irving. “A Pre-School Program for Deprived Children: A Pediatric Approach to an Urgent Social Problem,” title page of conference paper, April 1963. From Estelle and Irving Robinson Papers, personal collection of Joy Robinson-Lynch. The phrase “deprived children” was the era’s accepted AAP medical vernacular, referring to both special needs children and children from low-income backgrounds.
113 Juanita Faulkner, interview with author.
114 Robinson, “A Pre-School Program for Deprived Children.” Dr. Robinson’s 1963 program may have been more comprehensive than Project Head Start, the federal counterpart. According to Juanita Faulkner, Irving’s program advocated for medical intervention when children were toddlers, not three years old, the beginning age for Head Start. After the War on Poverty, the

39
and colleagues still recall the paper and insist it somehow helped “invent” the federal pre-K program, Project Head Start.115 “Not sure if he published [the paper], but his discussions about early childhood education were becoming widely circulated [during the early 1960s],” says Juanita Faulkner, who read the document and recalls discussing it at the time with Irving, while she was a graduate student. By 1963-64, “there were a lot of things going on,” she recalls, including a “flurry of [pre-school] initiatives” at the state and federal levels. Policymakers and elected officials, she says, including New Jersey Governor Richard J. Hughes, “recognized Dr. Robinson’s contributions,” and “people [across New Jersey] were beginning to hear what he was saying about early childhood intervention.”116 Today, it is difficult to say how, if at all, Dr. Robinson’s ideas about pre-school influenced the state or national policy agendas. Only the report’s title page survives and its content alone makes substantiating those claims difficult. However, the document speaks to the Robinsons’ early pre-K advocacy, which preceded, then paralleled the War on Poverty.
By mid 1965, the couple had become heavily involved with Head Start and other anti­poverty projects in the city. In December 1964, the Board of Education appointed Estelle as its representative to United Progress, Inc.’s Board of Directors. The position facilitated information flow between the two organizations and community planning for Trenton’s CAP programs
couple revised their own program to serve children from 18 months to three years-old, the ages Head Start did not cover. According to family and newspaper sources, the couple applied in late 1964 to public and private funders for a “Pre-Pre-School for Deprived Children,” including the Ford Foundation and the Office of Economic Opportunity. However, it seems the project did not receive funding and subsequently was abandoned.
115 The author has independently heard this claim from several sources, including Arthur Finkle, Juanita Faulkner and Joy Robinson-Lynch, who even remembers joking about it with her parents when they were alive.
116 Juanita Faulkner, interview with author. Governor Hughes, a longtime resident of West Trenton, whose children may have been patients of Dr. Robinson, later appointed him to New Jersey’s Head Start Advisory Board in April, 1965.

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including Head Start, a district-wide Department of Reading, adult education, and student work­study.117 Then, in January 1965, Ford Foundation awarded her a fellowship at Rutgers University’s Urban Studies Center as one of four “volunteer urban agent[s].” Modeled after New Jersey’s land-grant system for county agricultural agents, the experimental program sought “to test whether university developed ideas about urban problems [could] be communicated to people in the stateÉ”118 Irving also provided Head Start medical consultation to the Trenton Public Schools, Mercer Street Friends, and served on New Jersey’s Head Start Advisory Board, a sixteen-member body of medical and social service professionals that “advise[d]...in launching Head Start programs for over 11,000 pre-school children in 65 communities in all New Jersey’s counties.”119 The couple’s policymaking appointments recognized their local contributions to public education, and gave them unprecedented opportunities to develop their ideas into practice.
National events, such as President Johnson’s Great Society legislation, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the publication of Michael Harrington’s The Other America roused the Robinsons’ sense of political urgency and inspired their fervent activity in Trenton. “We know that we are now the richest nation in the world,” Estelle eloquently wrote during the 1960s. “And it is this great success of ours which makes our poverty unbearable for those who carry it and unacceptable for those who believe in the democratic ideals and yes—the basic values of this
117 City of Trenton. “1965 Annual Report City of Trenton New Jersey,” Trenton Evening Times, April 10, 1965, p. 7.
118 “City Woman Farm Idea Guinea Pig.” Trenton Evening Times, January 21, 1965.
119 New Jersey Office of Economic Opportunity. The Opportunity to Live in Decency and Dignity: Annual Report, 1965. State of New Jersey, October 1965, Annex 5. The additional information about Irving’s local Head Start consultations comes from Irving Robinson, Curriculum Vitae,ca. 1984. From Estelle and Irving Robinson Papers, personal collection of Joy Robinson-Lynch.

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land.” “Combinations are being put to work to eradicate poverty and the related social ills,” she noted, “but the overriding question that plagues us all is will it happen fast enough?” 120
It was during 1965, when the Great Society reached its zenith, when liberals worked feverishly to enact legislative programs, that Estelle Robinson first developed her niche as a Networker in Trenton. “I inadvertently served,” she recalled, “as an internal link between various agencies in the city, as well as a source of information.”121 As a woman on the BOE, Robinson had been denigrated and passed over for publicized leadership positions. However, the War on Poverty provided her new opportunities to influence policymaking through grass roots organization and information sharing. “I was able to serve a clearing house function within the city itself simply on the information I acquired on my rounds or had in my possession,” she wrote in 1968.122 Working in this capacity, Estelle and Irving informally linked community schools, policymakers, residents, and local, state and national organizations such as Rutgers Urban Studies Center, the Office of Economic Opportunity, East Trenton Civic Center, Mercer Street Friends, the Committee on Big Cities of the Federation of Boards of Education, the Jewish Federation of Trenton, and Youth Aliyah.123 This work merged Estelle’s past PTA-BOE experience and brought her into contact with many different grass roots groups. “People were always at the house,” recalls Eve Robinson, “My parents were always attending meetings.”124
Estelle Robinson’s community organizing during 1965 with Rutgers, UPI and the BOE earned her the respect of colleagues and superiors, and ultimately resulted in her own election as
120 Robinson, Estelle Richmond. Untitled speech, manuscript, Summer 1969. From Alexander Library, Rutgers University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964-2001. (accessed February 1, 2017)
121 Robinson, Estelle R. A City Views the University, p. 4.
122 Ibid.
123 “City Woman Farm Idea Guinea Pig.” Trenton Evening Times, January 21, 1965.
124 Eve Robinson, interview with author.

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Vice President to the latter two organizations in early 1966. Although ceremonial with little to no political power, the two positions publicly recognized Robinson’s work on behalf of public education in Trenton.125 Juanita Faulkner recalls both Estelle and Irving distinguished themselves during the War on Poverty as “strong advocates...to bridge the achievement gap overtly or behind the scenes,” and their passion for pre-school resonated with policymakers and elected officials. “Mrs. Robinson extended quite a lot in her contributions toward efforts to equalize programs for children,” she says. 126
Educational leaders such as Mayor Holland, Dr. Beck, and Gregory Farrell, Director of United Progress, Inc. saw Estelle as a “warm, decent, intelligent, and progressive voice worth listening to,” and viewed her organizing efforts as a model for what the Trenton schools could aspire to and achieve during the 1960s.127 Her accomplishments, her interest in closing the achievement gap, and her passion for public service allegedly placed her in the running for Board of Education President, a position she would have achieved if Mayor Holland re-appointed her to another three-year term in January 1967.128 However, partisan politics that year abruptly and prematurely ended those aspirations.
125 Arthur Finkle, interview with author.
126 Juanita Faulkner, interview with author.
127 Gregory Farrell, interview with the Trenton Project, December 4, 2017.
128 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author. City newspaper coverage from the 1960s corroborates this claim. Traditionally, the Vice Presidents of the Trenton Board of Education were given preference for the next presidential appointment.

Images 13 and 14: The Mayoral election of May 10, 1966 was an unexpected defeat for Art Holland, and Trenton liberals. The Mayor’s campaign manager Bill Faherty recalled the loss as “the darkest day of my life.”


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Moving Backward, Moving Forward
Estelle’s fortunes changed on May 10, 1966, when Art Holland unexpectedly lost re­election to Carmen J. Armenti, a conservative City Councilman who allegedly campaigned in East Trenton “about hitting street crime hard and ending wasteful liberal programs.”129
Armenti’s strategy, in part, capitalized on what Newsweek Magazine called a national “white backlash” against President Johnson’s civil rights and anti-poverty legislation.130 During the election, the candidate used racially coded, even gendered, rhetoric to turn Trenton’s contest into a local referendum for the same issues. At rallies in the city’s Chambersburg neighborhood, for example, Armenti taunted Holland as a “liberal” and allegedly promised to replace “minority groups and white people considered liberals...appointed [to the board] by...Mayor Holland.”131 The candidate’s campaign exploited civil rights and education as a wedge issue that would increase turnout in white, working class Chambersburg, North and South Trenton. “He was trying to play to the people,” says Juanita Faulkner.132 “Armenti preyed on whatever weaknesses Holland had,” recalls Arthur Finkle, a UPI colleague of Estelle Robinson’s whose uncle, Albert Finkle, worked as Armenti’s publicist. “He got the ethnic group together.”133
129 Peroni II, Pater A. The Burg: An Italian-American Community at Bay in Trenton, University Press of America, 1979, p. 82
130 “Politics: The White Backlash, 1966,” Newsweek Magazine, October 10, 1966.
131 Peroni, The Burg: An Italian-American Community at Bay in Trenton, p. 83. The backlash against Holland represented a culmination of voter anger toward the Mayor on several issues, including taxes, Urban Renewal, the economy, education and civil rights. Bill Faherty, however, Holland’s campaign manager, believed the main reason for the backlash was racism. In 1964, Art and Betty Holland moved to a racially integrated neighborhood, Mill Hill, and this, he says, was a deciding factor for many voters. “I will say to this day, the people unfortunately decided that Arthur had gone too far,” he recalled in an oral history. “What did he do? He moved into a mixed neighborhood. He didn’t do it purposely. He felt generally that he wanted to do this, and I think there was a backlash.”
132 Juanita Faulkner, interview with author.
133 Arthur Finkle, interview with author. With his uncle serving as Carmen Armenti’s publicist— and his father as Art Holland’s publicist—during the election, Finkle witnessed how the

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The Mayor-elect’s partisan, latently racist rhetoric against the Board of Education and “white people considered liberals” personally took aim at Estelle Robinson, her public leadership and support for Mayor Holland during the election. “Estelle would have been called—it would be a bad name— a ‘lover of blacks’ or something like that,” Finkle says. “She was a part of the ‘liberal establishment’ that the Italians wanted to oust [from power].”134 The Robinsons had braced themselves for a tough campaign, but did not expect the ultimate outcome, which came as a real personal shock to both. In the election’s aftermath, Estelle lost the board presidency, and her reappointment altogether to the Armenti administration.135 Steven Zwerling, an ex-relative, remembers the couple’s strong “disappointment” and their personal anguish during 1966 and 1967 as Armenti “purged” them from public leadership. “They were sad, grieving, as if something was dying,” he recalls, “They seemed deeply wounded.”136
At a pivotal moment for Trenton—demographically and politically—the couple was upset that Armenti’s administration shifted government’s focus from policy reforms toward what Estelle called “economics and power plays.”137 The new Mayor, for instance, diverted Title I
challenger spun the race and education issue for partisan gain. Contrary to election rhetoric, he says Mayor Holland maintained ethnic representation on the Board of Education and secured federal funds for schools across Trenton, including the Washington Elementary School in Chambersburg. These actions, Finkle says, constituted the reality, but Armenti’s campaign misrepresented Holland’s record to boost voter turnout and win the election. “That’s the way it was framed,” he says. “Perception is reality and that’s how my uncle framed it.”
134 Ibid.
135 For the BOE presidential nomination, Mayor Armenti replaced Estelle Robinson with Angelo J. Migliori, a Holland appointee and prominent, well-respected Italian-American doctor from Chambersburg. To some observers, the election was viewed as a power-grab by the Italian-American community. “At rallies held in the Burg,” wrote one, “some of Armenti’s followers emphasized that it was time to have an Italian-American mayor. Speakers said that all Italians must stick together this time and Armenti would bring glory to them.” The mayor’s new presidential appointment to the BOE would support that observation.
136 Steven Zwerling, interview with author April 20, 2018.
137 Robinson, Estelle Richmond. Untitled speech, manuscript, Summer 1969.

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education funds from summer reading programs, programs Estelle helped advocate at UPI, to recreational swimming classes. Armenti, in part, justified this decision by saying it better served the “tax paying public.”138 However, the diversion ostensibly occurred because many of the students enrolled in the program were black.139 Mayor Armenti’s replacement of career educators on the Board of Education—such as Helen W. Green with E. Chrystine Shack, the wife of Trenton’s welfare director—also undercut the board’s decision-making capacity with turnover and inexperienced personnel when the city needed qualified, experienced leadership to handle unrest at Trenton High School.140 The new administration’s policies and practices
138 “Complete Text of THS Study Report: City Human Relations Council Receives Findings of Panel,”, p. 7B. “Three years ago [in 1965] anti-poverty funds were made available for the creation of a department of reading within the Trenton school system through United Progress, Inc.,” the Human Relations Council wrote in July 1968. “We were advised that this was one of the first programs established under such auspices in the country. The program achieved positive results. For instance, at Cadwalader School, during the first year of the program (1965-66), 49 percent of the students in grade five were brought to on-grade reading level. In grade four 79 percent of the students were brought up to level, a gain of 30 percent, and grade three showed a 27 percent improvement...In Trenton Central High School, after a six-week reading course given to the lowest level tenth grade history class, there was an improvement of a year and three months in reading skills.” “There is evidence,” the council continued, “that the percentage of students at the high school who need developmental reading assistance is increasing. Yet we understand there are plans to curtail the reading program...[Mayor Armenti’s] proposed use [of funds] is recreational in nature—the provision of swimming pools—and may provide a summer’s diversion at the cost of future educational development.”
139 Kovisars, Judith F. Obituary for a Hometown: Urban Renewal in Trenton, NJ. Thales Microuniversity Press, Stillwater, Oklahoma, 1974, p. 63. According to Kovisars, “By 1965, the City announced that it sought five new schools by 1971 at a cost of 7.48 million dollars. The following year, the City received $2,500,000 in federal funds ‘to teach children of the inner-city.’ None of this money was for schools in the non-integrated, predominantly middle-class and lower-middle-class white neighborhoods. The deprivation of these schools from federal funds heightened the exodus of the whites to the suburbs and further strengthened the group solidarity and hostility of those who remained.” It is not clear which federal program Kovisars was referencing, but the timing suggests Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
140 “Armenti to Select 3 New Board Members,” Trenton Evening Times, January 18, 1968. Art Finkle says this appointment exemplified the retrenchment of “spoils system” politics under the Armenti administration, a departure from Art Holland’s efforts to professionalize the Board of Education.

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neglected what Estelle called “the human problems that have beset us” and forfeited what she believed to be the city’s basic, ethical responsibility to public education.141
Despite these setbacks and defeats, Estelle Robinson found closure—personal, professional, political—by reflecting upon her own public service and the passion, the sense of civic duty that had motivated her work with the city. When the Trenton Evening Times interviewed her in January 1967 for comment on not being reappointed to the Board of Education, Estelle’s response—her final public words about Trenton—made it clear she left the political scene defiant, but proud of her accomplishments. Robinson spoke to the paper candidly, arguing she believed her achievements were self-evident, above partisanship. “I can’t say I’d be disappointed if someone [Mayor Armenti] were to say, ‘no, you don’t have to put in hours and hours of service to the city,’” she said. “I don’t think not being reappointed would be any reflection on my performance. I’m conceited enough to say that.”142
The personal, written testimonials that Estelle received shortly before her departure may have uplifted her spirits, and inspired her statement to the press. Educators such as Dalba Brilliantine, Principal of Junior High School No. 2. praised Robinson’s leadership and capacity for visionary, big-picture thinking. “I want you to know that I personally feel you have been an outstanding member of the school board because of your understanding of all phases of the educational process,” the principal said. “Your record speaks for itself.”143 Administrators such as Dr. Beck and Dr. Christie also lauded Estelle for her fortitude and perseverance throughout her years in Trenton. “I personally feel the loss [of your departure] totally,” wrote Dr. Sarah
141 Ibid; the quote from Estelle Robinson comes from Robinson, Estelle Richmond. Untitled speech, manuscript, Summer 1969.
142 “Mayor May Replace School Board Trio,” Trenton Evening Times, January 11, 1967.
143 Brilliantine, Dalba. Dalba Brilliantine to Estelle Robinson, Trenton, NJ, January 16, 1967. From collection of Eve Robinson.

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Christie. “Your attitude and undiminished efforts in this month of transition are models for allÉand, particularly, to yours faithfully.”144
Estelle Robinson’s passions for grass roots organizing and closing the achievement gap transcended Trenton’s political difficulties of the 1960s and remained vital to her career for years afterward. “To the end of her life,” recalls Eve Robinson, “she was very dedicated to Trenton andÉvery proud of all the work that she did.”145 She especially took pride in the anti-poverty programs Mayor Holland’s BOE, Dr. Beck and Dr. Christie developed during her tenure such as pre-school, remedial reading, child study services, volunteer tutoring, summer learning institutes, bilingual classes, and speech therapy. These initiatives, small, but significant reforms which paralleled efforts nationwide, placed Robinson’s Networking at the forefront of local programs, including pre-K, that remain accepted in public education today.
144 Christie, Dr. Sarah. Sarah Christie to Estelle Robinson, Trenton, NJ, January 15, 1967. From collection of Eve Robinson.
145 Eve Robinson, interview with author.

Da*
.41.6-4-1Z74-1
PROGRAMS FOR HUMAN RENEWAL
Trenton Schools and Haman Renewal'
Pieta hro• (numbered) and descriptive material (numbered 1-121 indicate the part which the Trenton Public Schools Ore playing in the renewal of our
human resources. An of these programs ore funded with greatly in­creased ,slate aid; with large grants of _ Federal oid; wish assistance from foun­dation grants; or with a corfibinatiod of oil three. Nearby colleges, univers. Wes and private schools. os well on the New Jersey State Departrnent Of Education have helped establish and implement MeSe programs_ The local community action agency, United Progress, Incorporated, hos also worked very closely with the school system on many preitolt. The prole-cis described here do not - cover oil of the new programs, but are illustrative of efforts which the schools are making for human renewal.
Trenton Board of fducation
A .1 attalseri.lrl ,PrrOrtrot
Nolen Yr. corn
Edward 1 stenin, DOS.
lode tory,ItA
Rolm P. Won
John Serowe
Eugen• Ildrontek
Iturcorl Wert, MM.
Richard T. got, EO e sum nt schopir
John D.Hervey,Sorenm or Echoer Loma
·         7. Princeton University Cooperative Programs Far the third canserotive summer, Prtmason Unirtersiry will sponsor a school for 911., 1011. and 11th graders to dernomfrola better ways of teaching-Me inner city Auden/ TOCI6C11,IfOrrli Trenton ond surrosoding onets wilt elmsn moats ttothers setected frommony parts of the cuunrry. NI students are from Trenton'Schooln federal and
foundation funds support th  peg rams.
·        8. Lawrenceville preparatory School Projects
For The third consecutive 9111,1, 6714,11[0.110- reill sp.., programs for More able students from an inner city school The purpose of throe summer programs is to hero prepomTrenhorisyoung people to entertop-flight colleges FeiderS1 funds through 0.9.1. and foundatinn mergers ore paying for Orme programs_ Lawrenceville Preporoftry. School conhibutes greet-1y in making their foal-lies and their fine staff available Ion Trenton students_
·        9. Title I (E.S.E.A.) — Public 'and Porodnat School Praqrams
Doing the past Mo years the Trenton Schools hone received much needed additions! Federal funds through Title I attire Elemenmry.Serondory School Act. These fords ore dedicated to helping disodvorstaged pupils in bath public and parochial schools. Additional supplim, hooks, equipment, aides and teachers been vastly improved looming opportunities far our disodeantoged students. One of the finest outcomes hos been the fine cooperation between public and pore chic! school stuffs.
·        10. Work Experience
Over -4513 rtuderrh are now engaged in partfigne work experience programs while_ they are attending school. These yobs not anry permit Mordents to earn needed money so that they mrry stay in sohool her are of great practical melee to the students. Many of these smgroms hose been roonsored by C-Yr }D.' community action ogeoty (0.P.I.), while others ore sponsored with vocarlionol funds. 5til1 others ore sponsored by private bosinnis net industry.
·        1-1. National Teacher Corps
Al Jeff mon School Trenton has the only Notionot Teacher Corps in limn Jersey.
A team leader and three.young teacher infernos, paid throug5 Federal fund, are enriching program% for se-recut% and community oat, time 'Peary Corps" type reams are doing o tremendous jab for the entire Jefferson Scheel area. This is on. of our finest new proven.— a reel onset.
·        12. Junior Five Project
This is the Era cooperative school project in the stale end porhopi in the country inveforag o Stone Deportment of Educolion, a State College end a city school system. The purpose of this project ot Junior Foe is to develop beater ways of meeting tire
·         nee& of inner city wedded-a In this fourth year of operation, financed through opeciol Stone funds, Jollier rwecominties to Moraine., toils in education for children from
four years oldto !harken-. • '       '                   ' • • •            
·   1. Head Start
lhis 'pm kindergoeen program is pet-Asps the bert known end moff successful of oil Federal programs. In Trenton it tackles us to support on ollyearsound program for for some 300 foucyearolds end a special summer pogrom far some odditienol fart:- year-olds to propose them tar school, sr ir funded through our load community action ogency (U P.1.1 and hes been in apart:don since July, 1965.
·   2. Skills Training Center
Ties Manpower Training Act program_ trains school dropouts end the needled -unemployable.' for prodoctive johns G Co different vocations it iso part of Trenton's greatly expanded Vp[pf■onoi progrorn made possible wills Federal fends. Job Voce-meat for these vocational graduates is extremely high. It it in its second year of operation.
·     3. Grant Demonstration School
A moior Fodecal grant wish Thin III funds fffementury Secondary. EducPtion Act) hos mode possible this inner ory exernplory school. Student teachers from Trynten State College end regular staff members. from Trenton Schools Gore better mehods of Machin. An oddisioe te Grant School is now onder .111truction to fooldesp Iris demonoronor school teaching. This oddities will be completed in September, 1907, reody far the second year of apes:iron.
·     4. Adult Education
-Federal and Slate funds, again wills local OAF. eminence, hove msde evadable many new adult programs in boric education_ Three marnmunrty schools at Grant, ',her and teenier Ewe are effective, meeting the needs of irony of our elder youth and oduns..These neun programs once fine add..ro to our outstanding or.-going accredited evening high school Pragrom-
·     5. Action Bound
Underachieving and poorly morbased high school yoolh ore being sionilicantly helloed by this aut-of-doer 'kussivolu program, Fully funded through Federal and faundotien sources, this Action Bound grogram, Whdl WIOnWed ii tnatoisch hos given many young people a reel challenge to uchievo. Plans hove lea been approved for a folltirhe Action Bound progrom at Trento. Cannot Nigh School lent peer for some 1D0 youth. This, on introrotion with great promise.
·     6. I. P. I.
Washington School Ins the only Individuolited Prescribed Instruction P.F..1.) project in the entire owe Funded M.-6,h Research tor Meer Schools. 5, Project wider Title IV
indiedval oroeroor.me being developed Inc end, srtfent in mothernatios. needing and sCience-Spertol mot-Geols and. speoully rtainnol. mashers will 011I(1,1 vidtors hem a wide area to ab,r-irre borer way-sq.-oohing_ .
irro SCIMISimbliMAN
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Image 15 (previous page): A list of anti-poverty programs developed by the Trenton Public Schools, May 1967. As the Board of Education’s United Progress, Inc. representative from December 1964 to November 1966, Estelle helped as an information facilitator, an “internal link,” for the planning of many of these programs. Although disappointed by the election, she found solace in her accomplishments: the programs whose legacy outlasted her untimely public departure.

Image 16: Paul and Barbara Ylvisaker, March 1967. The Ylvisakers were close friends of the Robinsons, and Paul an important professional mentor to Estelle. Ylvisaker’s interest in the relationship between higher education and grass roots policymaking influenced Estelle’s own Networking concept, which she developed after the “long, hot” Summer of 1967.


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Building the Network
After departing Trenton’s public scene, Estelle Robinson pursued new organizing projects at Rutgers University, where she could affect changes on a statewide basis. “She got another venue, a bigger venue, in terms of acting upon her beliefs around collaborative projects to move change and justice,” recalls Ann Wilson. “She was now able to move what she had seen in Trenton to a bigger arena.”142 After the “long hot” Summer of 1967 when unrest erupted nearby in Newark, Estelle’s work as an Urban Agent assumed a new relevance and urgency as cities mobilized to prevent additional violence. Meeting informally during this time with other like-minded New Jersey organizers and policymakers at the home of Dr. Paul N. Ylvisaker, the state’s Director of Community Affairs, Estelle and Irving Robinson discussed organizing strategies that would address racial tensions in the community. The couple’s connection to Ylvisaker positioned them at the vanguard of national urban affairs, and helped inspire Estelle’s own organizing concept, Networking, to combine grass roots and higher education resources for local policy reforms.
Estelle Robinson developed Networking partly in response to her concern with the growing unrest in Trenton’s school system. “The sudden ‘solution’ to the Trenton High School crisis didn’t succeed in making anybody happy at last night’s dramatic school board meeting,” solemnly reported the Trenton Evening Times. It was December 20, 1967, less than one year after her departure from the Board of Education, and student fights the previous week at Trenton Central High School attracted more than 500 students, parents, and teachers to the Board of Education’s meeting, where people debated race relations and the future of city public education. The event was a remarkable, if not pivotal, moment of civic discourse, where black and white,
142 Ann Wilson, interview with author.

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affluent and poor Trentonians articulated their grievances and “heard each other out in a sometimes bitter dialogue.”143
At the meeting, attendees voiced collective frustration with the public leadership and institutional racism, mismanagement, and negligence. “Dissident students, some of their parents, students who object to the disorders, parents who just want their children to go to school and teachers were equally upset,” the Times reported. “I have no gripes against any teacher,” Marvin Dotson, a student, testified. “The students have gripes...against the administration. I want the administration out...tonight.” Paulette Williams, a recent graduate, told the board that at college she “realized my experience at Trenton High was distorted. I realized I led a much more segregated life than students in Tuscaloosa or in Maine.” Mrs. Rosanne Abrams, a parent, also tearfully asked the Board of Education “whether the school [is] going to be open on January 1 and every day after that.” Then, speaking the issue that was on everyone’s mind, Abrams answered her own question: “I’m worried about my children’s education.”144
Estelle and Irving Robinson also testified that day as concerned parents, and community activists. Their eldest daughter Amy had already graduated high school, but their two youngest daughters, Joy and Eve, were still matriculating students. Trenton High’s unrest and turmoil, therefore, were as much personal as political issues for the couple. On December 20th, Irving, speaking for himself and Estelle, publicly raged against Mayor Armenti and the BOE for jeopardizing his children and others, “[calling] the school board’s silence ‘cowardly’ and [questioning] whether the board had yielded to political pressure.”145 “My father would get very
143 Goodman, James E. “‘Solution’ to THS Crisis Fails to Satisfy Anybody,” Trenton Evening
Times, December 21, 1967.
144 Ibid.
145 Ibid.

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animated when this stuff happened,” recalls Joy Robinson-Lynch. “If he was pissed, you knew. And he would call it for what it was.”147
The Trenton Evening Times reported Dr. Robinson “said he [and Estelle] had a lot of respect for what the students were saying about some of their problems” but noted the absence of any significant policy response to these protests. The “question,” he argued, was “simply ‘Is the student body going to control the school.’”148 As public officials including Dr. Beck, the Board of Education and other administrators “sat and took all the abuse” and deferred comment during the meeting, Estelle recognized their performance only exacerbated tensions.149 “She could the read the water,” Joy recalls. Unlike Irving, however, Estelle was “more measured in her speech” and waited until after the public comment to express her grievances.150 Frustrated, she personally approached Dr. Angelo J. Migliori, the new BOE President, to register her protest. “A lot of the parents came here in good faith tonight to hear what the school board had to say,” Estelle told Migliori. “And now they’re going home frustrated. This was a time to talk to them.” Dr. Migliori, a former board colleague—who publicly admitted that “many mistakes have been made in the past by people in high places”—told Estelle his own frustrations. “Try sitting up here,” he replied. “You can’t hear a thing.”151
147 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author. Irving modeled his social advocacy after the protagonist Sam Abelman from author Gerald Green’s 1956 novel The Last Angry Man. Abelman, an elderly Jewish doctor in Brooklyn, dedicates his life to serving the neighborhood poor and defending the downtrodden. His personal mantra, which inspired Irving’s work, was to be “angry at diseases, not people.”
148 Goodman, “‘Solution’ to THS Crisis Fails to Satisfy Anybody.”
149 Ibid. According to the newspaper, Trenton school officials deferred comment “with the explanation that a special committee appointed by the Trenton Human Relations Council will make a full report on the issue.” The paper reported that “Mrs. [Estelle] Robinson is a member of the study group.” Estelle may have participated because of her work with UPI during the Holland Administration. The Human Relations Council didn’t publish its report until July, 1968.
150 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.
151 Goodman, “‘Solution’ to THS Crisis Fails to Satisfy Anybody.”

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The incredibly frank, candid exchange between Robinson and Migliori spoke to the enormous political challenges confronting Trenton and other cities during 1967. Unrest that summer in Newark and Detroit had “shocked” activists such as Estelle and Irving Robinson and, for the first time, forewarned the couple that without strong public leadership, Trenton might also erupt in violence. “Had we [the activists] been able to move more quickly, had the War on Poverty been more comprehensive, perhaps we could have avoided the next step—the violent riotous protests which shocked everyone,” Estelle wrote.151 The “long, hot summer” and the volatile state of national politics convinced the couple that personal involvement was crucial and necessary for diffusing the tensions. “The events of the summer of 1967 as well as the daily examples of social unrest illustrate the urgency of the need for in-depth attention to the internal problems of our country,” Estelle wrote as civil rights and anti-war demonstrations swept the country, reaching Trenton’s doorstep.152
Bureaucracy, Estelle Robinson observed, was a primary obstacle drowning out voices for change, and hindered the school district’s response to unrest. “Estelle knew there was not enough,” recalls Ann Wilson. Trenton, she says, had “good people, competent people working in the health department, the local schools, or in the local child welfare agency,” but institutional racism and mismanagement undercut those individual efforts.153 Robinson recognized the system’s leaders, such as Dr. Beck and Dr. Christie, were inherently well intentioned, but those below them, such as Trenton High principal William D. Walker, weren’t keeping up.154 The
151 Robinson, Untitled speech, manuscript, Summer 1969.
152 Robinson, A City Views the University, p. 11.
153 Ann Wilson, interview with author.
154 “Complete Text of THS Study Report: City Human Relations Council Receives Findings of Panel.” Trenton Evening Times, July 15, 1968, p. 7B. The Trenton Council on Human Relations report on the high school disorders, a remarkable document worthy of its own study, vividly details the institutional problems contributing to the high school unrest in 1967 and 1968. The

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system’s internal weak links, including the high school administration and the recent turnover on the Board of Education, impeded high-level decision-making and helped perpetuate the political paralysis evident during the December 20th meeting. Trenton Public Schools had distinguished itself with innovative anti-poverty programs during the mid-1960s, but the system’s own internal flaws, both in practice and belief, hindered the same policy efforts at the grass roots level.
As the city school system descended into chaos and unrest, Estelle Robinson drew upon her organizing knowledge to develop Networking, a strategy, she hoped, would improve Trenton’s institutional response to racial tension. Robinson, in part, honed her ideas through informal discussions she and Irving held with Paul Ylvisaker throughout 1967. The Robinsons first met Ylvisaker during the mid 1960s when they volunteered for UPI, and looked to him as both a professional mentor and “good friend.” “My mother really admired Paul Ylvisaker,” Eve Robinson recalls.155 Ylvisaker headed President Johnson’s Task Force on Model Cities, and became New Jersey’s Director of Community Affairs after departing the Ford Foundation in March 1967.156 His nationally-recognized policymaking efforts during the War on Poverty resonated with Estelle’s own passions for education and provided the linchpin for her Urban Agent efforts in Trenton. “Paul was a natural connector,” recalls Gregory Farrell, UPI’s first
report argues “[Walker] became caught up in the routine of administration and, prior to December of 1967, was remote from and unknown to the great majority of students. The discontinuance of regular assemblies contributed to this [reputation] as did the infrequency of his presence in the cafeteria and in the halls. Certainly personal contact with all students is impossible in a school of this size [3,000 plus] but means were and are available by which the principal could make his presence felt.”
155 Eve Robinson, interview with author.
156 “Paul N. Ylvisaker, 70, Educator and Urban Planner,” The New York Times, March 20, 1992.

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Director and fellow Ylvisaker disciple. “He and [his wife] Barbara would invite people to the house and they were affected by the glow of his brilliance.”158
Estelle Robinson, in part, found professional inspiration for Networking through the Ylvisaker’s social circle, which she recalled as the “spontaneous network” of “interested people [who] have already been working together in some way,” united by a “common purpose,” the city.159 The Ylvisakers’ liberal friend group included the Robinsons, Art Holland, now a Rutgers researcher, Greg Farrell, Donald Cogsville, UPI’s new Director, Robert Curvin, founder of Newark’s CORE chapter, Joel Sterns, Governor Richard Hughes’ chief legal counsel, and Bud Chavooshian, New Jersey’s Planning Director, who met informally to socialize and talk politics at the Ylvisaker home near Princeton.160 The group’s dinner parties and gatherings became the stuff of legend, as they shared and debated ideas about urban policy and grass roots organizing. “My mother became very friendly with people in Newark, New Brunswick trying to revitalize these cities,” recalls Eve Robinson. “Both my parents were social people, and others really flocked to them just to sit around and talk.”161
These conversations, in part, informed Estelle Robinson’s vision for Networking as a “direct action” strategy to help mediate tensions in Trenton.162 In April 1968, she codified her ideas in a prescient memo to the Dean of Rutgers’ Extension Division, titled “A City Views the
158 Gregory Farrell, interview with author April 27, 2018. Ylvisaker established his own political network through connections at the Ford Foundation, where he served as Public Affairs Director. During the early 1960s, according to his obituary, he “funneled money to social programs predating the war on poverty,” including the Rutgers Urban Studies Center, and earned national praise for envisioning such efforts.
159 Robinson, A Guide to Networking, p. 3.
160 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author; also, Gregory Farrell, interview with author.
161 Eve Robinson, interview with author.
162 Robinson, Estelle R. Untitled speech, 30th Anniversary Celebration Center for Community Education, manuscript, 1996.

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University.” The 11-page document drew upon interviews Robinson had conducted throughout 1966-1967 with the Ylvisaker group and community stakeholders such as Mayor Armenti, Dr. Beck, Dr. Christie, UPI officials, social service professionals, Christian and Jewish clergy, public school teachers, “poverty” and “middle-class” neighborhood residents.166 She concluded, in part, that Trenton’s most urgent institutional problem was “setting up channels of communication.” “All [participants] agreed this was the biggest lack in the city and compounded problems,” she wrote. Furthermore, Estelle argued that Trenton’s bureaucracy lacked “a cohesive force” that could facilitate “information flow” and establish “a comprehensive clearing house operation.”167 Although Networking sought to connect local institutions with university resources, she argued its success depended on grass roots participation.168 “The challenge to faculties and students,” she concluded, “is one of personal involvement which is in a sense the challenge to all Americans.”169
Estelle Robinson’s Networking represented one well-intentioned effort to mobilize Trenton at the cusp of violence, but its timing for the city was too little, too late. In April 1968, the same month as Robinson submitted “A City Views the University,” an assassin felled Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights leader, and unrest erupted in Trenton and other cities across the United States. Familiar with the local politics in civil rights and education, Estelle and Irving empathized with the black community’s anger and understood it had to pass. “My parents saw the riots as just an indication of the times, a vehicle for people to express their frustration with a lack of progress,” recalls Eve Robinson. “I think they viewed everything as part of the cycle of change.” Eve notes that the 1960s, particularly 1968, was a “time of fast changes,” including
166 Robinson, A City Views the University, p. 3.
167 Ibid, p. 5.
168 Ibid, p. 2.
169 Ibid, p. 11.

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assassinations, civil rights demonstrations, women’s marches and anti-war protests that challenged the existing political authority. “All these movements were happening, and Trenton reflected the changes going on,” she recalls.167
Since the 1950s, the city’s activists, organizers and policymakers, including the Robinsons, had worked to reform the public education system but their efforts were limited by institutional conditions and political forces, the “fast changes,” that now seemed beyond their control. “We wage what is termed a war on poverty only to discover it is a skirmish,” Estelle wrote in 1969. Despite the tireless efforts she and Irving spent organizing, advocating policies in Trenton, the “crisis in our cities,” she said—the local Mayor’s election, the election of a new President who campaigned “to put aside a comprehensive attack on hunger,” the liberal coalition’s fracture over “a war which seems more and more unrelated to any national purpose,” and the “disorders which plague us at this moment”—had shown, she believed, why this “attack has not been intense enough, or continuous.”
“In spite of all the many words, stated and published, in spite of what we term national awareness of the poverty problems, the urban problems, the crisis in our cities, in spite of the Economic Opportunity Act and all its programs, in spite of the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, in spite of all our good intentions—poverty is still very much with us.”168
As Trenton erupted in unrest during April 1968, first at Trenton High School, then downtown, Estelle struggled to reconcile these events with her own ideals: that despite everything she and her colleagues had individually stood for and done, despite years of Networking, despite “all our good intentions,” “poverty is still with us.” And it was this poverty—and racism, and sexism, and inequality— she acknowledged, that fueled racial tensions and the anger of “young people
167 Eve Robinson, interview with author.
168 Robinson, Estelle Richmond. Untitled speech, manuscript, Summer 1969. From Alexander Library, Rutgers University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964-2001. (accessed February 1, 2017)

whose eagerness, militancy, and determination to break the bonds of poverty we see daily.” “We have a great choice to make at this moment,” she said. “Will we become so divided because we are so suspicious of each other’s motives that we remain so?”169
The issues in Trenton and other urban areas were complex, without clear solutions, and their circumstances—the social, political, economic unrest of the 1960s—had surpassed Estelle’s own efforts to change the city. “There were good-hearted people in Trenton who really tried to make it work,” her daughter Eve Robinson says. “My parents were two of them. But there were forces beyond everybody that made it difficult to achieve.”170

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169 Ibid.
170 Eve Robinson, interview with author.

Image 17: School administrators, including a dejected Dr. Beck, at the Board of Education’s monthly meeting, Trenton High School, December 20, 1967. After retiring early from his position in July 1968, Beck remarked that “What happened here is part of a nationwide feeling of unrest. A lot of people have simple answers for complicated problems. There are a lot of things wrong with our schools, but you could have the best school in the country and still have a riot.”


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Epilogue: ‘Powerful Tool, Elusive Goal’
Years later, Estelle Robinson, recalled those days in Trenton as she spoke in 1996, after a lifetime of Networking. “I have the advantage of being 75 years old and as they say—Been there—Done that,” she told the crowd at Rutgers University.170 It was the Center for Community Education’s 30th anniversary, and Estelle, now retired, spoke as a seasoned veteran of the War on Poverty, sharing stories from Networking the city. Recognizing the event’s significance, she reflected on Networking, and the legacy of community organizing from the 1960s onward. After 1968, Estelle joined the Rutgers University faculty full-time as an Assistant Professor, then a tenured Professor of Social Work, where she focused on family life education and health services provision. Through her efforts to Network educators, policymakers and service providers, Robinson became an early, leading advocate in New Jersey for family education. “Most of what she did at Rutgers was based on what she had done in Trenton,” recalls Eve Robinson.171
Speaking before the audience, Estelle said “it was fun for me to look back, and talk about the old days,” and told the crowd that she felt “fortunate” to have participated in the Great Society programs which “innovated [policy] changes and empowered people who had been
170 Robinson, Estelle R. Untitled speech, 30th Anniversary Celebration Center for Community Education, manuscript, 1996.
171 Eve Robinson, interview with author. The story of Estelle’s tenure as a faculty member at Rutgers is as epic as her story in Trenton, and worthy of another study by itself. She remained an “Urban Specialist” at Rutgers Urban Studies Center until the early 1970s, when she joined a class action lawsuit against the university demanding equal pay for women faculty and staff. The legal fight involved the American Association of University Professors, the Women’s Equity Action League, the Rutgers law professor (and future Supreme Court justice) Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and New Jersey Senator Clifford P. Case. The University settled with the plaintiffs in 1976, and Estelle was ultimately promoted to a fully tenured professorship in the School of Social Work. Her advocacy in this capacity with the New Jersey Network for Adolescent Pregnancy, coordinated by Ann Wilson, and with other colleagues including Susan N. Wilson, executive director of the Network for Family Life Education, helped place her at the forefront of developing family life education in New Jersey.

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powerless.” Yet, she frankly acknowledged the War on Poverty’s shortcomings, including its failure to end urban poverty, the city’s biggest ill. “You have been given a list of some of the activities, projects, and programs over the 22 years of my tenure,” she said. “The issues remain the same and the efforts toward solutions are elusive. The sociologists, social work scholars, political scientists, psychologists, educators, grant writers and private foundations are busy working at the same old stand—laboring in the vineyards.”172
Contemplating the powerful, but “elusive” goal she called activism, Estelle Robinson recalled her final, bittersweet years of living in Trenton. After 1968, she and Irving remained in the city, hopeful it would recover. Despite the unrest and upheaval, “they thought it would stabilize,” says Eve Robinson. “We still had some vital neighborhoods. Downtown was shrinking and dying away, but I think they thought maybe the other neighborhoods would still remain.” 173 While other Trenton doctors moved to the suburbs, the Robinsons stayed on West State Street to advocate social justice ideals and serve the neighborhood poor. “Here’s to you, Mrs. (Estelle) Robinson, and to you, too, Dr. Irving Robinson for daring to argue for people and life,” one neighbor wrote in 1979. “You dared to say that families are the future of this city.”174 The couple’s medical practice and neighborhood organizing efforts demonstrated their optimism and confidence in Trenton. “They still believed in Trenton, and they still wanted to be there,” recalls Joy Robinson-Lynch.175
However, as years passed, Trenton’s economic collapse, including the spread of poverty to West State Street where the couple lived, left them grasping for solutions. “The cities,
172 Robinson, Estelle. 1996 speech.
173 Eve Robinson, interview with author.
174 Paci, Catherine. “Trenton Couple Earns Applause for Stand,” Trenton Evening Times, February 13, 1979.
175 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.

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including Trenton, were left behind,” recalls Eve Robinson. “People left for the suburbs, cities weren’t safe and they didn’t have jobs.”176 Middle class residents moved away, businesses and industries divested, and Estelle and Irving’s block gradually changed. “There was no more Trenton of her youth, or their young adulthood,” recalls Joy Robinson-Lynch.177 Abandoned buildings and vacant lots slowly appeared on West State Street and crime, especially muggings, break-ins and robberies, grew rampant by the early 1980s. “The neighborhood was getting dangerous,” she says, “My parents were committed [to the city], but they had barbed wire on the windows and were doing more to secure themselves in the house.”178 White flight, deindustrialization, stagflation, the Reagan Revolution, globalization. Each movement, in turn, exacerbated poverty in West Trenton until, finally, it reached Estelle’s doorstep. “My mother was disappointed [because] she had hoped things could be done,” says Eve Robinson. “It was very hard for her to watch the city deteriorate the way it did. Very emotional.”179
Trenton was a microcosm of what Estelle Robinson had learned after decades of public service: being an organizer was a “deep struggle,” and “you’re a lifetime working at these things.” In Trenton, her hometown, she had accomplished so much—advancing racial integration in education, trailblazing leadership opportunities for women, and championing early childhood programs—yet the city’s fate showed how those efforts, her own efforts, remained imperfect. “I would not use the word ‘disillusioned’ to describe Estelle because she was, at her core, an optimist,” recalls Ann Wilson. “But I think she may have had her eyes opened in terms of how much more difficult and entrenched any solutions are. That may have been the sadness to her,
176 Eve Robinson, interview with author.
177 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.
178 Joy Robinson-Lynch, interview with author.
179 Eve Robinson, interview with author.

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that there was no fix, there was no easy answer, there was no solution that every child in America would go to sleep safe, not hungry, and by god, safe at school.” Reflecting on how her friend would have rationalized what happened, Ann returns to the title of one Rutgers study about adolescent pregnancy: “No Easy Answers.” The title, she says, suggests Networking— Estelle’s search for political solutions to urban poverty, and racism, and sexism, and inequality— is “never ending.”
“We thought we solved it in one generation in terms of a War on Poverty with staff programs, and so forth, but here we are 30 years later, still struggling around these issues. They are entrenched, systemic, and are part of each generation, it seems, because we’re not looking at the root causes. And that’s a struggle that each generation must deal with.”180
Estelle grappled with these same questions in 1996, arguing her generation’s efforts to achieve political solutions proved “elusive,” but nonetheless vital, for inspiring long-term “progress.” “The present thinking is that all those efforts failed—that there was no great society—or not a great enough society—and the proof is that many of yesterday’s problems are here today,” she told the audience. “As the government gets downsized, the issues get downsized, if not hidden away.”181 Yet, Estelle said, it was the larger cultural shift that her cohort inspired in Trenton and elsewhere—the advancement of racial equality, gender equity, education reforms—not just the city’s immediate problems, that defined their legacy. Future generations, she said, would come to understand and appreciate this long-term view, despite the present-day challenges. “I suggest to you that social changes cannot be measured in a short
180 Ann Wilson, interview with author.
181 In her later years, Estelle also expressed frustration with New Jersey state officials and their policies, whose collective indifference she blamed for Trenton’s economic decline. For example, the state maintained a tax-exempt monopoly on prime downtown and riverfront real estate, parcels it had condemned during the 1960s for “Urban Renewal,” but neglected for decades as highways and parking lots. “My mother blamed all the governors for a lack of attention to Trenton,” recalls Eve Robinson. “It bothered her that the legislature was in Trenton and they would drive in and drive out and never pay any attention.”

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span of time,” she said. “30 years is perhaps long enough to have learned what can work, what needs to be done and how to start the process toward progress.”182
Networking the city, Estelle Robinson understood, was an imperfect, but real means to an end for enacting change. “There are no easy answers or quick fixes,” she wrote in the twilight of her career, “but each person has the capacity to make a difference through decisions made and actions taken.”183 That individual “capacity to make a difference,” the passion for organizing and public service that started with her mother and motivated her, she knew, would continue with her children and others committed to social justice ideals. Although many challenges remained for the city—the “Bridge to 2000,” Estelle said, looked “shabby” and it was “frustrating to see lack of progress”—her ultimate hope for Trenton, and America, lay with the younger volunteers, organizers and policymakers who, like her, were dedicated to service.184 “The best source of help for a network,” she argued, was “within the network itself,” those people committed to the real work, as she and Irving had done, and Evelyn and Israel Richmond before them, of caring for their communities and helping others. “Network participants,” she said, “contribute ideas, leadership, enthusiasm and dedication.”185 “We now look for leadership to face the needs and gaps in [social] services,” she told the crowd. “Will it come from the top down or from the bottom up, I don’t know. I’ll leave that to my colleagues for later today.”
“Our song is ended,” she said. “I hope the melody lingers on.”186
182 Robinson, Estelle. 1996 speech.
183 Robinson, Estelle R. and Aleta You Mastny, Linking Schools and Community Services: A Practical Guide, Rutgers University Center for Community Education, Newark, NJ, 1989, p. 32. <https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED318929.pdf>
184 Robinson, Estelle. 1996 speech. The quote “within the network itself” comes from Robinson, A Guide to Networking, Rutgers University, 1985, p. 10.
185 Robinson, A Guide to Networking, p. 10.
186 Robinson, Estelle. 1996 speech.

Estelle Robinson had spent her career, a lifetime of organizing in Trenton, New Brunswick, and Newark, advocating policies and building political coalitions. And through her work, she persisted against many adversities to enact small, but significant changes that preceded bigger ones. “That’s the struggle of Networking,” says Ann Wilson, “I see this too as a community organizer. You work, and work, and work. It’s the powerful tool, but also the elusive goal.” Wilson says that Estelle—if she were alive—would have been proud of how Networking laid the groundwork for movements today such as #MeToo and gun reform, where “women are running for political office, and young people are speaking out.” These national movements, Ann says, help vindicate Estelle’s legacy by building, in part, upon her own lifetime of work. Despite being an organizer in Trenton when few women held public office, or when liberals were outnumbered at City Hall, or when poverty struck her neighborhood, or whenever political odds were against her, Ann says Estelle “never lost the passion,” and that, she believes, always gave her friend hope for the future.
“That’s part of what Estelle would say,” she says, “‘You pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, and keep on trucking.’”187

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187 Ann Wilson, interview with author.


Image 18: Estelle at Rutgers University, ca. 1966. The photograph
timelessly captures her at work, standing her ground, speaking her mind.

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Conclusion
Estelle Robinson’s career epitomizes the story of America’s forgotten urban activists, the organizers, public servants and policymakers whose reform efforts during the 1950s and 1960s were drowned out by unrest, but whose long-term legacies survive through modern political organizing, movements including women’s rights, civil rights, education, criminal justice, and gun reform. Despite the political setbacks of post-war liberalism, Robinson and her Great Society counterparts in small, mid-sized cities across the country achieved small, but significant accomplishments—lasting accomplishments such as advocacy for civil rights, gender parity in the workplace, and educational equality—that still resonate with public policies today. Estelle’s story of Networking in Trenton highlights the forgotten activists’ role in social movements of the 1960s, and how such movements—the civil rights and anti-poverty struggles of the North—were not just comprised of large institutions, but individuals doing the work regardless of title, position or institutional affiliation.
The people whom Estelle collectively referenced as the “Network” were on the ground, “laboring in the vineyards” as she said, before, during and after 1968, working with municipal governments, non-profits, and universities. They were also career volunteers, organizers, and civil servants who courageously fought for their communities and upheld their values during a time of polarization and division. Although their role in the decade’s turbulent social change remains forgotten, misunderstood, or taken for granted, their service—of putting people first and bridging divides—remains as, if not more, relevant to the present generation of Americans. Today, with this country struggling to reach political consensus, the need for more Estelle Robinsons, Americans willing to stand at home for the common good, is greater than ever.

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Public service is and will always be a noble profession for Americans of all persuasions who care for these ideals, helping others and making a difference in people’s lives. Estelle Robinson exemplified such service—community organizing, volunteerism, and advocacy— demonstrating it is a lifetime of persistence, patience and commitment. It is a line of work that can be truly rewarding and frustrating at the same time, encapsulating the strengths and imperfections, the contradictions of society in which it exists. Today, Networking—modern organizing—remains the powerful tool, but elusive goal for advocates fighting poverty, racism and inequality nationwide. Although social change is uneven, and fluctuates with the political cycles, Estelle’s story in Trenton speaks to the vital role of grass roots participation in the process. Ultimately, the national political change starts with local voices, leaders like Robinson, who are passionate for the issues and embrace the personal challenge to serve their communities. Modern organizing will always continue, so long as these Americans—the individual activists, public servants, and ordinary citizens—engage with the process to shape the future arc of history.

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“Paul N. Ylvisaker, 70, Educator and Urban Planner,” The New York Times, March 20, 1992.
Peroni II, Pater A. The Burg: An Italian-American Community at Bay in Trenton, University Press of America, 1979.
“Politics: The White Backlash, 1966,” Newsweek Magazine, October 10, 1966. “Receives Orchid,” Trenton Evening Times, June 5, 1958.
Robinson, Estelle Richmond. “Money for Schools,” Trenton Evening Times, December 10, 1958.
---. A City Views the University, manuscript, April 1968. From Alexander Library, Rutgers
University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964-2001. (accessed February 1, 2017)
---. Untitled speech, manuscript, Summer 1969. From Alexander Library, Rutgers University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964-2001. (accessed February 1, 2017)
---. Untitled speech, Networks and the New Jersey Network on Adolescent Pregnancy, manuscript, ca. 1982. From Alexander Library, Rutgers University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964-2001. (accessed February 1, 2017)
---. A Guide to Networking. Center for Community Education, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 1985.
---. Untitled speech, 30th Anniversary Celebration Center for Community Education, manuscript, 1996. From Alexander Library, Rutgers University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964­ 2001. (accessed February 1, 2017)
---.
“Vita,” ca. 1986. From Estelle and Irving Robinson Papers, personal collection of Joy Robinson-Lynch.
--- and Aleta You Mastny, Linking Schools and Community Services: A Practical Guide, Rutgers University Center for Community Education, Newark, NJ, 1989. <https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED318929.pdf>
Robinson, Eve. “Thank you and Some New Discoveries...,” email message to author, December 6, 2016.
---. “Photo,” email message to author, March 16, 2018.
Robinson, Irving. Telegram to Estelle Robinson, May 28, 1958. From Estelle and Irving Robinson Papers, personal collection of Joy Robinson-Lynch.
---.
“A Pre-School Program for Deprived Children: A Pediatric Approach to an Urgent Social Problem,” title page of conference paper, April 1963. From Estelle and Irving Robinson Papers, personal collection of Joy Robinson-Lynch.

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---.
“Curriculum Vitae,” ca. 1984. From Estelle and Irving Robinson Papers, personal collection of Joy Robinson-Lynch.

Robinson-Lynch, Joy. “List of Items-Misc. Writings by Estelle Robinson,” email message to author, March 20, 2018.
---. “Re: New Discovery,” email message to author, February 12, 2018.
“To Draw Qualifications List for School Board Candidates,” Trenton Evening Times, November 1, 1959
“Urbaniak, Bodine on Estimate Board,” Trenton Evening Times, February 2, 1961.

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Additional Works Consulted
Adams, Ruth Richmond. “Growing Up Jewish before World War II.” The Jewish Magazine, August 2012.
Antebi, Jordan, Owen Clarke, Kelly Fischer, Mia C. Mummert, Kira Olander, Paul Savarskyy and Alamelu Sekkappan. The Mercer County Magnet Program: Attracting Diversity and
Closing the Achievement Gap. Manuscript, June 2015. From collection of author.
Althauser, Robert and Ann Ryan. “Initial Community Data on Trenton, N.J.” Chapter from, “From Theory to Operations: Disadvantaged Children and Their First School Experiences, ETS-Head Start Longitudinal Study,” Office of Economic Opportunity, Washington, D.C., August 1969.
Berman, Lila Corwin. Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit. University of Chicago Press, New York, 2015.
Bott, Elizabeth. Family and Social Networks. London, Tavistock, 1957.
Branch, Taylor. Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1999.
---. At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006.
Cannato, Vincent. The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York. Basic Books, New York, 2001.
Caro, Robert A. The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2012.
City of Trenton “1965 Annual Report City of Trenton New Jersey,” Trenton Evening Times, April 10, 1965.
Cohen, Adam and Elizabeth Taylor. American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley, His Battle for Chicago and the Nation. Little Brown, New York, 2001.
Cumbler, John T. A Social History of Economic Decline: Business, Politics, and Work in Trenton, Rutgers University Press, 1989.
Curvin, Robert. Inside Newark: Decline, Rebellion, and the Search for Transformation. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 2014.
Farrell, Gregory. “The View from the City: Community Action in Trenton,” from Sundquist, James L., ed. On Fighting Poverty: Perspectives from Experience, Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1969.

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Gillette, Michael L. Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012.
Goldman, Eric F. The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1969.
Golub, Adam. “Solving the School Crisis in Popular Culture: Why Johnny Can’t Read Turns 60,” Ethos: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities, and Public Ethics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2015.
Goodman, James. “A Few Handshakes, 2 Careers End: Dr. Beck and Dr. Christie Leave City School Posts Today,” Trenton Evening Times, July 31, 1968.
Harrington, Michael. The Other America: Poverty in the United States. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1969.
Johnson, Lady Bird. A White House Diary. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1970.
Johnson, Lyndon Baines. The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1971.
Krasovic, Mark. The Newark Frontier: Community Action in the Great Society, 2016. The University of Chicago Press, London, 2016.
Liebman, Arthur. Jews and the Left. John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1979.
Lindsay, John. The City: New York’s Mayor Reports Firsthand on the Struggle to Make a Livable City. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1970.
Mahaney, Kathryn. “‘A Pervasive Pattern of Delinquency:’ Rutgers University and the Struggle for Equal Pay, 1970-1976,” unpublished thesis, September 2010. Accessed via Rutgers-Newark Online, <http://rci.rutgers.edu/~rufair/pdf/RN%20Women's%20History%201970-76.pdf>
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, The New York Times Edition. E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., April 1968.
Russakoff, Dale. The Prize: Who’s in Charge of America’s Schools? Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2015.
Smith, Marshall and Gray Sidwell. “Trenton, N.J.” Chapter from, “From Theory to Operations: Disadvantaged Children and Their First School Experiences, ETS-Head Start Longitudinal Study,” Office of Economic Opportunity, Washington, D.C., August 1969.
Ylvisaker, Paul N and Virginia M. Esposito, ed. Conscience and Community: The Legacy of Paul Ylvisaker, Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers, New York, 1999.

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Zelizer, Julian. The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society. Penguin Press, New York, 2015.

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Author’s Interviews
Gregory Farrell  April 27, 2018.
Juanita Faulkner February 13, 2018
Arthur Finkle      September 24, October 16, 2016; March 10, 2017; February 16, 2018
Elizabeth Holland         February 7, March 19, 2018
Janis Kind          October 14, 21, 2016
Eve Robinson    December 6, 9, 2016; February 8, March 2, 2018
Joy Robinson-Lynch December 1, 2016; March 10, 19, 2018
Stan Salett         April 17, 2018
Becky Urban      October 29, 2016
Ann M. Wilson   February 17, 2018
Steven Zwerling April 20, 2018
Trenton Project Interviews
Gregory Farrell  December 4, 2017
Herb Spiegel      November 23, 2016
Herb Spiegel
and Martin Siegel         September 1, 2016
Trenton Public Library, Trenton Jewish Historical Society Oral History Collection
Estelle and         March 20, 1996
Irving Robinson
Rutgers University Eagleton Institute of Politics, Oral History Collection William F. Faherty May 15, 2006

73
Washington University Libraries, Film and Media Archive, Henry Hampton Collection
Paul N. Ylvisaker August 10, 1989
Temple University Digital Archives
Paul N. Ylvisaker November 14, 1977

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Image Credits
Image 1: Alexander Library, Rutgers University, The Estelle Robinson Papers, 1964-2001
Image 2: Joy Robinson-Lynch
Image 3: Joy Robinson-Lynch
Image 4: Eve Robinson
Image 5: Trenton Evening Times, accessed via Newsbank.com
Image 6: Trenton Evening Times, accessed via Newsbank.com
Image 7: Joy Robinson-Lynch
Image 8: Trenton Evening Times, accessed via Newsbank.com
Image 9: Joy Robinson-Lynch
Image 10: Trenton Evening Times, accessed via Newsbank.com
Image 11: Joy Robinson-Lynch
Image 12: Trenton Evening Times, accessed via Newsbank.com
Image 13: Trenton Evening Times, accessed via Newsbank.com*
Image 14: Trenton Evening Times, accessed via Newsbank.com*
Image 15: Trenton Evening Times, accessed via Newsbank.com
Image 16: New Jersey State Library Digital Archives
Image 17: Trenton Evening Times, accessed via Newsbank.com**
Image 18: Joy Robinson-Lynch
*Quote from Image 12/13 comes from William F. Faherty, Rutgers University Eagleton Institute of Politics Oral History Collection.
**Quote from Image 16 comes from Goodman, James. “A Few Handshakes, 2 Careers End: Dr. Beck and Dr. Christie Leave City School Posts Today,” Trenton Evening Times, July 31, 1968.

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Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the many individuals who helped make this paper possible.
Although I never met her, I must first thank my subject. Estelle Robinson bequeathed me one of the best inheritances: the living “Network” of relatives, friends and colleagues, who, in every case, eagerly and patiently fielded my inquiries. Hearing from them about Estelle’s passion and dedication, in turn, motivated my own enthusiasm for researching and writing her story.
From the start, Eve Robinson, Joy Robinson-Lynch and Amy Robinson supported this project, volunteering untold hours for interviews and other tasks. Eve was my first contact, and her networking on my behalf ensured access to many living relatives, friends and associates. She also furnished papers from her mother’s career on the Trenton Board of Education. Joy spent hours searching through boxes of her parents’ personal papers at home, scanning photographs and documents. Amy provided vital encouragement with heartfelt, uplifting notes during difficult moments of the writing process.
The first-rate guidance of Alison Isenberg, my academic adviser, was an absolute blessing. No matter how stressed or tired I may have felt, Professor Isenberg always challenged me to go above and beyond. Her own research about Harlan B. Joseph and the unrest of 1968 is an inspiration to be compassionate, but questioning, as a historian.
Ann Wilson generously mailed a copy of Estelle Robinson’s A Guide to Networking, and publications from the New Jersey Network for Adolescent Pregnancy. She also spoke quite candidly about working with Estelle and her lifetime passion for public service.
Betty Holland spoke at length about Trenton during the 1960s and her and her husband’s longtime friendship with the Robinson family.
Arthur Finkle, Trenton’s Jewish historian, gave me a copy of his book Trenton’s Jews, and furnished information about the city’s Jewish community and the 1966 Mayoral election.
Juanita Faulkner shared stories from her 50+ year career in New Jersey education, including working as a public-school teacher in Trenton. She is one of the few Trentonians who remember Irving Robinson’s pre-school project, and Helen W. Green, the first black female member of the school board, two subjects worthy of further study.
Greg Farrell warmly shared recollections from the ‘Ylvisaker group.’ As one of its only living members, he remains a vital link to Paul Ylvisaker, whose prolific career, although relatively unstudied, profoundly shaped American domestic policies of the 1960s.
Steven Zwerling, a distant relative and former Ford Foundation employee, shared memories of the 1966 election, and explained the role of private foundations in early anti­poverty programs.
Stan Salett, one of the legislative architects behind the War on Poverty, generously spent an afternoon sharing memories about Paul Ylvisaker and Project Head Start.
Susie Wilson, Herb Spiegel, Martin Siegel, Becky Urban and Janis Kind, also shared their memories of Estelle Robinson and Trenton for this project.
Erika Gorder of Rutgers University Special Collections and University Archives, Laura Poll of the Trenton Public Library, and Mark Merkovitz of the Jewish Federation of Princeton­Mercer-Bucks, provided technical assistance at their respective organizations.
Finally, special thanks to my parents, Julian Antebi and Hilary Burke, whose love and encouragement are an inspiration daily.

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