We are saddened to share the following news from our department of African American Studies:
The Department of African American Studies mourns the passing of Professor Emeritus Robert Allen, who joined the ancestors on July 10, 2024. Professor Allen was a beloved colleague, mentor, and friend in our community. In collaboration with Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, AAS will honor Professor Allen's life and contributions to our departments with an event in the fall. More details are forthcoming. In the meantime, we share a tribute to Professor Allen by Elder-in-Residence Ms. Daphne Muse.
A Tribute to Journalist, Scholar and Selfless Civil Rights Activist, Dr. Robert L. Allen
May 29, 1942-July 10, 2024
By Daphne Muse
“A North Star for how I make my way through the world.”
– Former student and Co-founder of Art Aids Art, Dorothy Yumi Garcia (Mills College, 1979).
After decades of appeals for official pardons to exonerate the 50 Black sailors charged with the 1944 mutiny at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine on the shores of Suisan Bay in Port Chicago, Contra Costa County, Northern California, the long-overdue official exoneration of 256 Black sailors was issued by Secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, on July 17, 2024, a week after Robert Allen’s death. At times during his speech, Del Toro paused to halt the tears welling up in his eyes. Jason Felisbret noted that his uncle was a month shy of his 18th birthday when he was killed.
Bob devoted decades conducting meticulous research and applying his impeccable scholarship to documenting the tragedy, including in The Port Chicago Mutiny: The Story of the Largest Mass Mutiny Trial in US History, published in 1989. The Navy made decades-long attempts to keep the story of this atrocity and double standards among the then-segregated military buried under the depths of the sea. On July 17, 1944, munitions being loaded onto a cargo ship detonated, causing secondary blasts that ignited 5,000 tons of explosives at the naval weapons facility, killing 320 sailors and civilians, the majority of whom were Black. Another four hundred personnel were injured. The human remains were picked up by the surviving Black sailors, who hours before had seen their comrades blown to bits. They also had to clean up the blast site, while the white sailors were granted leave to recuperate. Those Black sailors repeatedly expressed their concerns about loading the munitions, a task for which they had not been trained. The entire incident speaks volumes about how absurd and utterly irrational racism can be.
But the arc of social justice inches its way uphill out of the trenches of racism oftentimes after being beaten back relentlessly. Bob remained undeterred and made an Emmy award-winning documentary about the atrocity at Port Chicago. He refused to allow those men who served their country honorably to be “bombed” out of history. His research included interviews with surviving sailors such as Freddie Meeks, Joe Small, and Martin Bordenave; all the sailors are now deceased.
“Bob lived his life for this historical decision. He laid the foundation for these men to be exonerated and today at the 80th anniversary celebration, his efforts were honored. From the time he first conducted interviews with the survivors and their families, he reassured them that victory would be realized, and their legacies memorialized,” proudly noted his former wife Janet Carter, the CEO of Positive Coaching Alliance.
His first book, Black Awakening in Capitalist America: A Historical Analysis, published in 1968, set off at times contentious debates at the intersections of Black Power, Black Pride, and the manipulations of corporate capitalism to ensure a select few entered through its gates and lynched the dreams of so many others. In 1995, he would go on with co-editor Herb Boyd to lift the voices of Black men through the publication of Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America: An Anthology. “He opened the world of thought through the depth of his historical writing and dynamic teaching. He researched, documented, and probed the pillars of history. His work honored and celebrated hundreds of nameless men who served our country and moved their names onto the historical record,” according to social commentator and author Playthell Benjamin.
Born to Robert L. Allen, Sr. and Sadie Allen in Atlanta, a city crafted from Reconstruction racism, he attended Morehouse College where his mother was at one time the Dean of Students. He would go on to secure a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of San Francisco. After navigating decades of social justice work from the newsroom of The Guardian to the rural enclaves of the South to the classrooms of Mills College and UC Berkeley, Emeritus Professor of Ethnic and African Studies Dr. Allen joined an esteemed cadre of ancestors on July 10th. His life on this earth, which he lived to the core of his being, came to an end as a result of a battle on the fields of dementia, which he fought with unwavering courage.
Controversial and courageous, from the plantation politics of Mills College, where he was the chair of my department, Bob knew how to deal with a challenge, tactically. At Mills College, his persistence resulted in emboldening other faculty and administrators, albeit reluctantly, to make decisions that addressed the inherent racism and classism prevalent in the academy. He also laid the groundwork for transforming the Ethnic Studies Program into a department.
His long-standing work as an editor at The Black Scholar, primarily with his devoted friend and coeditor Robert Chrisman, resulted in a depth of analytical thinking and creativity of scholars, artists, activists, and educators throughout the Diaspora. The Black Scholar was founded in 1969 by Chrisman, Nathan Hare, and Allan Ross and was the third journal of Black Studies and research established in the United States. Robert Allen joined the journal in 1971. He worked as tirelessly on The Black Scholar as he did everything from his investigative journalism to his teaching. His friend and ally Patrick Scott, retired Executive Director of Pacifica and the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center in San Francisco, worked closely with Bob and Chrisman to purchase a building in Berkeley as the base of operation for the journal. Before completing his tenure with the journal, he endowed it to the archives at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, alongside the papers of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and writer Gwendolyn Brooks, award-winning artist Mildred Howard, and my own.
Bob witnessed and wrote about the assassination of Malcolm X, met with leaders in Vietnam, and stood at the side of so many others committed to unshackling the chains of oppression. He dreamed the dreams of a liberated future and practiced the peace of those dreams out in nature at Wild Trees. His longtime dearly cherished friend and partner at Wild Trees Press, award-winning novelist and poet Alice Walker, spoke about him movingly, “Robert Allen loved nature. The stars, the moon, the ocean, the sky. Trees. Birds. Rocks. He also seemed to know something fascinating about all of them. I was delighted to be his student during our many years together as a couple delightedly sharing the wonders of each other and of the universe!”
Bob was also as committed to his work as a feminist as a scholar and served as a founding member of the Oakland Men’s Project. Organized more than forty years ago in the San Francisco Bay Area and inspired by the women of the women’s liberation movement, their motto became “Men’s Work: To Stop Male Violence.” His partners in this initiative included Alan Creighton, Paul Kivel, David Landes, and Zef (Heru Nefera). They went on to conduct workshops in schools and community centers and even conducted a workshop on the Oprah Winfrey Show back in the early 90s.
He would go on to receive numerous honors including a Guggenheim and be honored by various community organizations for his outstanding work. For almost every person, the word “kind” was stated when reflecting on who Robert Allen was. He truly is a national treasure, for his work clearly reflects his standing in the worlds of activism, social justice, and scholarship.
“His legacy and activism for future generations as a brilliant scholar deeply committed to producing transformative scholarship is unwavering. Equally significant, he was a generous colleague who anchored our graduate program by serving as Faculty Advisor. After he retired from UC Berkeley, he continued to support former students and their efforts to publish dissertations, articles, and books on Black life and culture. Former students are texting me in droves inquiring about his memorial service. The department certainly will honor his legacy in the classroom and community,” noted Dr. Ula Y. Taylor, author, Professor, and Chair of African American and Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
I am reminded of the mutiny at Port Chicago and Bob’s book because my regular trips into Berkeley to teach take me past the site embedded in the history of racism in the military and the Black sailors who gave their lives defending America, which refused to defend them. On those rides I sometimes share the history of the Port Chicago Mutiny with the Lyft drivers and note Bob’s book. A couple were familiar with the history and were pleased to know about the book.
I would be remiss if I failed to note that Bob also mastered Partying 101, loved his old school soul and jazz jams, and held forth in a jook joint or two. His days on the set of the epic 1985 film The Color Purple, observing Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel transformed into a movie, took him back, deep into the heightened racial tensions of an era experienced by the generation of his parents and the scholars who brought him into intellectual formation, including W.E.B DuBois. He bent the arc of justice while trekking across the scorched earth of segregation, racism, and other dimensions of oppression while meeting the challenges of co-parenting a mixed-race son at the intersections of the Black Power, Civil Rights, and Women’s Movements. He dreamed the dreams of a liberated future and practiced those dreams out in nature at his place of peace: Wild Trees.
While his legacy will continue to serve as a foundation for the vision, scholarship, and activism of future generations, he was also as kind as he was fierce, and to a community of young children he was Uncle Bob, including my daughter Anyania Muse, whom he taught to ride and respect horses. I was honored to be his colleague and friend since 1975 and will continue working to ensure his legacy keeps marching on across the canon of Black Studies and the community.
Robert Allen is survived by his son Casey dos Santos Allen of San Franciso. He also is survived by his wives Veteran of the Civil Rights Movement Chude Allen of San Francisco; San Francisco resident and CEO of Positive Coaching Alliance Janet Carter; and Poet and Professor of Literature Zelia Monteiro Bora of Joao Pessoa, Brazil. In addition, he is survived by his sisters Damaris Kirschhofer of Hawaii; Teresa Coughaanour of Portland, Oregon; and Rebecca Allen of Florida.
As his journey launches on the powerful chords of Bernice Reagon’s “Been in the Storm So Long,” he also is survived by the members of the Friends of Port Chicago who worked alongside him to ensure these men would someday be exonerated. As a beacon of brilliance, the light of his intellect and scholarship guided thousands of students who will remember his rigorous lectures grounded in reams of research and delivered with the kind of thought-provoking clarity that truly engaged and inspired their minds. And in the spirits of Freddie Meeks, Joe Small, Bunny Simon (grandfather of Lateefah Simon, running for United States House of Representatives in California 12th Congressional District), and the other Black sailors serving a country which denied them the access to the training and safety measures that could have prevented this atrocity. They may well be honoring him with a “First Salute” and waves of gratitude for working tirelessly for their exoneration. His seat at the ancestral table across from Septima Clark, Frederick Douglass, and his beloved Mother Sadie Allen, awaits his arrival, at a feast of gratitude prepared by his legacy will continue to serve as a foundation for the vision, scholarship, and activism of future generations.
“History, despite
Its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived,
But if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.”
- Poet Maya Angelou
A celebration of his life is pending.
Daphne Muse is a writer, cultural broker and Elder-in-Residence at the Black Studies Collaboratory in Abolitionist Democracy in the Department of African American and Diaspora Studies. She lives in Brentwood, California 24 miles from Port Chicago on the Southern banks of Suisun Bay in Northern California.