Perry Ray Robinson (12 September 1937 – c. 25 April 1973) was an African American activist from Alabama during the civil rights movement.
[1] He also attended the funerals held for James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, and participated in organizing Resurrection City, a camp set up in 1968 at the Washington Mall to draw attention to the plight of poor people of color in the United States.
[7] During a 1973 meeting of VVAW, Robinson learned of the ongoing occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, by American Indian Movement (AIM) activists at the Pine Ridge Reservation to protest federal government policies.
According to his wife, Robinson decided to go to the reservation to support the occupation and work to align the rights movements of both groups of people of color.
Cheryl Robinson never saw her husband again, and filed a missing person's report with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) when he failed to return home from Wounded Knee.
In October 1974, Cheryl traveled to AIM offices in Rapid City, South Dakota, and its headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota, but was not able to learn much more about her husband's fate.
[11] In 2011, Buffalo-based attorney Michael Kuzma filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI for records concerning Robinson's disappearance.
Banks happened to discuss Robinson, saying that he had been shot by another AIM officer after provoking a fight with him and bled to death because the group was under siege and had no way to treat him adequately.
[14] Publisher Paul DeMain reported that a former AIM member described Robinson to him as a "loud mouthed nigger, who refused to pick up a gun during a firefight," making him suspect.
[8][15] In 2011, AIM leader Carter Camp told Robinson's daughters that the Guardians of the Oglala Nation, commonly known on the reservation as GOONs, killed their father.
[14][16] Activist John Trimbach criticized this account for distorting the history of the Wounded Knee incident and failing to provide substantive evidence of the allegations.
[17] In 2013 Robinson's daughter, Tamara Kamara, worked with attorney Michael Kuzma in Buffalo, New York, where she lived, to file a Freedom of Information suit against the FBI and government to force the release of relevant documents.
On 11 March 2014, the FBI released documents to Kuzma confirming the death of a black civil rights activist during the 1973 AIM occupation of Wounded Knee.
[18] Kuzma said FBI files included statements that "Robinson had been tortured and murdered within the AIM occupation perimeter, and then his remains were buried 'in the hills.
[5] These conditions included a shortage of food, constant surveillance, regular shootings as the occupation was "under fire," and the unilateral AIM command.
The witness said, "The next thing, I heard a loud bang and saw Mr. Robinson's lower leg spin from the knee and rotate outward as he started to fall forward.
"[5] The security team is alleged to have consisted of, among other members, Banks, Camp, Leonard Crow Dog, Frank Blackhorse, Stan Holder, Harry David Hill, and Clyde Bellecourt.
According to Bernie Lafferty, a witness who confirmed Robinson's presence on the reservation during the Wounded Knee incident, several AIM members openly discussed the murder of a black man whom they had buried on the hillside.
This was run by Madonna Gilbert Thunderhawk and Lorelei DeCora Means, as well as several other volunteer nurses and medics, including non-Indians.
This episode was criticized at the time in a six-page letter to PBS management signed by Joseph H. Trimbach, former FBI Special Agent-in-Charge at the time of the events, his son John M. Trimbach, and five Native Americans who had been involved at Wounded Knee; they said AIM violence had not been fully portrayed and noted the allegations about AIM responsibility for Robinson's and others' deaths on the reservation, as well as the 1975 murder of leader Annie Mae Aquash, had been glossed over.