Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Page 1
Funeral Services Scheduled for Tomorrow for Retired Inglewood Judge Roosevelt Robinson Jr.
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Services will be held tomorrow for retired Inglewood Municipal Court Judge Roosevelt Robinson Jr., who died last Thursday at the age of 87.
Superior Court Presiding Judge Carolyn Kuhl informed colleagues of Robinson’s death by email. She noted that he was a Howard University law student during the litigation of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and that he and other students worked on the briefs and sat in the courtroom as future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued the case.
He received his primary and secondary education in the Jackson, Miss. public school system. He completed Lanier High School in Jackson at age 16 and went to Buffalo, N.Y. and later to New York City.
Drafted into the Army, he served as a military policeman in Kobe, Japan.
Graduating from Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Miss. he enrolled at Howard and received his law degree in 1954. He engaged in the private practice of law in Los Angeles from June 1956 until April 1976, when he was elected by the Inglewood Municipal Court’s judges as a court commissioner.
Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him a judge of that court the following year. He served a total of nine years as the presiding judge and retired in January 1996, although he sat by assignment after that.
He served five years as treasurer of the John M. Langston Bar Association, which named him to its Hall of Fame in 1996. He chaired the boards of the Crenshaw YMCA and Centinela Valley YMCA, was district counsel for the fraternity Omega Psi Phi, was a life member of the NAACP, chaired the Tougaloo College National Alumni Association , was treasurer of the Howard University Law Alumni Association, and was named Citizen of the Year by Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. and Person of the Year by the Centinela Valley YMCA.
Survivors include a son, Roosevelt Robinson III, who is president of Middletown Ford, an automobile dealership in Ohio.
A viewing will be held today from 4p.m. to 8 p.m. at Angelus Funeral Home, 3875 Crenshaw Blvd, Los Angeles 90008. Tomorrow’s service will begin at 11 a.m., preceded by viewing at 10 a.m, at Holman United Methodist Church, 3320 W. Adams Blvd, Los Angeles 90018, where Robinson served as a trustee.
Copyright 2015, Metropolitan News Company