America W. Robinson

When the Civil War started, his master opened an ammunition factory that produced guns for the Army of the South.

Robinson witnessed treatment of soldiers from both Union and Confederate armies in a makeshift hospital established in her family's house.

[6] In 1866, Robinson enrolled on opening day in the new Fisk Colored School at Nashville, founded by the American Missionary Association.

Her father Patrick Robinson, age 40, was noted as born in Virginia, and with the occupation of carpenter.

Her mother was Elizabeth Robinson, age 34, born in Tennessee, also classified as mixed-race, which meant that both lines (and America and her siblings) had European-American ancestry as well as African.

These classmates were the first blacks to earn a bachelor's degree from a liberal arts college located south of the Mason–Dixon line[8] In the late 1870s, Robinson and James Dallas Burrus became engaged, and Burrus borrowed money from her in order to attend graduate school at Dartmouth.

[6] Robinson married Edward Lucas, a schoolteacher, and the couple moved to Noxubee County, Mississippi.