Ira L. Robinson, an attorney and the first African-American to serve on the Alexandria, Virginia, City Council after Reconstruction, died Friday at his home in Temecula, California.  He was 85.   

During his three-year term on the Council, Robinson was instrumental in bringing about major changes in education, housing, and law enforcement, including a 1971 secondary school integration plan that brought the Alexandria public schools into full compliance with federal desegregation law.  Nearly three decades after that plan consolidated three previous high schools into T.C. Williams secondary school, the turmoil of that period – and the resulting football championship that reunited the community – remained such a potent story that it became the basis of the Disney movie, Remember the Titans. 

Also marking that era in Alexandra politics were the titanic, but civil, debates between Robinson, a Democrat, and Wiley F. Mitchell, a Republican, whose priorities for the city, though often at odds, led to steady increases in minority hiring, the distribution of moderate and low-income housing city-wide, the development of the Metro area transit system, and eventual redevelopment of the Potomac Railroad Yard, Cameron Station, and the neighborhoods along the Route 1 corridor and Mount Vernon Avenue. 

Before his election to council, Robinson focused much of his activism on changing the face of policing in the city and on relations between police officers and Alexandria’s African-American youth.  In 1968, he served on the Alexandria Crime Commission and, the following year, as adviser to a Michigan State University team, hired by the city manager to produce a “Study of Police Community Relations” in Alexandria. Robinson also served on the Alexandria Commission on Criminal Justice and the Metropolitan Council of Government’s Task Force on Drug Abuse.  He also chaired the city’s Urban League voter registration drive, served on the boards of the local branch of the NAACP and the Boys Club, and was a member of the Alexandria Economic Opportunities Commission and the Mayor’s ad hoc Committee on Health Care.  An avid sports fan, he advocated for young African American athletes who needed legal advice. 

Robinson was born in 1938 in New York City where his parents had moved from central Virginia during what is now known as the great northern migration.  His father died when Robinson was six, causing his mother to move with him and his older brother back to Richmond, her childhood home.  There, lacking a college degree, she had little choice but to take domestic work – a fact that vexed Robinson his entire life.  She relied on a sister, who had a master’s degree and a teaching job in the city’s segregated public school system, to help raise the boys. 

After his graduation from Virginia Union University in 1959, Robinson followed in his aunt’s footsteps, teaching elementary school.  But his college mentors had higher hopes for him.  In the fall of 1964, with the support and encouragement of the president of Virginia Union, Robinson was admitted to the University of Virginia School of Law, becoming the fourth African American student to earn a UVA law degree. 

Degree in hand, Robinson moved to Alexandria in 1967 to work as an associate legal counsel with the Susquehanna Corporation.  Three years later, he became administrative assistant to the president of Atlantic Research Corporation, an aerospace firm which was a subsidiary of Susquehanna.   

As his term on City Council was coming to a close, Robinson transferred across the country to Susquehanna’s Los Angeles office. From then until his retirement, in 2006 from K&R Law in Los Angeles, Robinson worked at various southern California firms, advising them on healthcare and real estate law. 

Upon retirement, Robinson moved to Temecula, California, where he resumed the political activism of his early years, registering voters, campaigning for Democratic candidates for Congress in majority Republican districts, and serving on the legal redress committee of the Southwest Riverside County branch of the NAACP.  He returned to northern Virginia twice in recent years to supervise election-day voting as a member of the national Democratic Party’s voter protection team. 

Robinson is survived by former wives Sharon Derring Robinson of Playa Vista, CA, and Barbara Thibault Robinson of Irvine, CA, daughter Cary D. Robinson of Playa Vista, son Marcus A. Robinson (Raquel Lizniansky) of Tracy, CA, two granddaughters, Jasmine Tookes-Borrero (Juan David Borrero) and Chloe D. Conwell, great-granddaughter Mia Victoria Borrero, great nieces and nephews Dorianna, Trevor, Isaac and Brian Gardner, and lifelong friends Andrew Epps of Richmond, Andrew Evans of Washington D.C., and Mary Ames originally of Alexandria.  Robinson was preceded in death by his parents, Courtland and Lottie Olphin Robinson, his brother and sister-in-law, Courtland and Margetta Robinson, and his first wife, Rose Robinson Roberts of Columbia, Maryland.  

The family asks that gifts in memory of Robinson be sent to his undergraduate college, Virginia Union University, Richmond, VA 23230 or to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.  A celebration of Robinson’s life will be held in the coming weeks near his home 

If you prefer communication in another language, free interpretation and translation services are available to you, please email Language.Access@alexandriava.gov or call 703.746.3960.