Recording of November 10, 1972 funeral service, at Riverside Church (New York, N.Y.), of James Herman Robinson. Founder of Operation Crossroads Africa, Robinson was born in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1907, and educated in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended Lincoln University in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Union Theological Seminary (New York, N.Y.) in 1938. As pastor of Harlem's Presbyterian Church of the Master, he organized a credit union, an early childhood education program, and upstate New York camps for Harlem's youth. As a member of the NAACP and the Urban League, Robinson was identified by the US State Department as a subversive, and threatened with revocation of his passport. Beginning in 1951, Robinson served the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Board of Foreign Missions as a roving ambassador, visiting mission fields in Africa and Asia. In 1958, Robinson organized Operation Crossroads Africa under the auspices of COEMAR; the program sent American medical students to West Africa. At its peak, Crossroads Africa sent 350 students to 20 African nations. Robinson suffered three heart attacks in 1969, and died in 1972.
