Robert Thomas Kerlin (March 22, 1866 – February 21, 1950) was an American educator, minister, and civil rights activist.

While teaching there, he published The Voice of the Negro,[2][6] an anthology of writings from African-American newspapers centering around the Red Summer.

[2] In 1921,[6] Kerlin wrote an open letter[3] to Thomas C. McRae, the Governor of Arkansas, requesting that he review the cases of several black farmers who had been sentenced to death following the Elaine massacre.

The farmers had been convicted of instigating the riot, but Kerlin argued they had acted in self-defense under attack.

After the letter was written and published in The Nation, the Board of Visitors of Virginia Military Institute asked for his resignation.

[6][7][8] After he was fired from Virginia, Kerlin found employment as a lecturer[3] and at West Chester University in Pennsylvania in 1922.

[1] Kerlin was fired from his job at West Chester University after five years for "being too friendly with Negroes and for having radical views with respect to the social order.

Kerlin was involved in the formation of Cumberland's chapter of the Progressive Citizens of America, a socialist political group.

That year Kerlin was a nominee of the Socialist Party of America to be a member of the United States Electoral College.