Robert Leon Woodson Sr.[1] (born April 8, 1937) is an American civil rights activist, community development leader, author, and founder and president of the Woodson Center, a non-profit research and demonstration organization that supports neighborhood-based initiatives to revitalize low-income communities.

While completing his graduate work, Woodson became actively involved in the civil rights movement, directing and coordinating community development programs for a number of local and national organizations, including the NAACP.

[3] After resigning from the NAACP, Woodson moved to Boston, where he spent three years as a social worker with the Unitarian Services Committee.

[3] As a director of the National Urban League, Woodson began to develop a strategy to reduce crime by strengthening community institutions that were closest to the problems of high-crime areas.

[7] In 1973 Vernon Jordan, head of the Urban League, and Representative John Conyers, chair of the U.S. House subcommittee on crime in the Judiciary Committee, supported Woodson's opposition to vesting more power to Justice agencies as a solution to crime, and a better solution was focusing on neighborhood empowerment.