Biography
Eroseanna "Sis" Robinson was a Black Chicago social worker, recreational director, and amateur track athlete who refused to pay federal income taxes for the years 1954–1958 as principled opposition to military spending. A member of Peacemakers and the War Resisters League, she was arrested on January 27, 1960 and charged with contempt of court for refusing to pay taxes and refusing to turn over financial records to the IRS. Convicted in federal court in Chicago before Judge Edwin A. Robson, she was sentenced to one year and one day. She was held first at Cook County Jail and then transferred to Alderson Federal Prison in West Virginia. The National Guardian, March 21, 1960, dated the start of her hunger strike to February 4 and reported that she was being fed intravenously against her will at a federal hospital. This contemporary date differs from later accounts placing the protest at the beginning of her incarceration. Prison officials released her early after approximately three months, citing the burden on medical staff. Robinson was also a pioneering civil rights activist — in 1959 she remained seated during the national anthem at an outdoor track event at Soldier Field, and in 1961 she was arrested alongside Wally and Juanita Nelson during the Route 40 Freedom Riders restaurant desegregation campaign in Maryland. She died in 1976.
The March 21, 1960 National Guardian called her Roseanna Robinson and described a January 27 courthouse hearing. That hearing caption is not evidence to replace the separately documented January 26 arrest.
