Robert Charles Martin

Robert Charles Martin was born in Hanover Court, Virginia in either 1856 or 1858. His family eventually moved to Washington, D.C. He enrolled at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio in 1884 where he was a member of the Phi Delta Literary Society. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1887 and enrolled at the Yale Divinity School the same year.¹

During his time in New Haven, Martin was an active member of the Colored Republican Club and in 1888, spoke in favor of the Republican Party for the upcoming general election. In the same year, Martin married Emma Skinner, an organist at the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church where Reverend Albert President Miller, another Black graduate of the divinity school, officiated the marriage. In 1889, Martin left Yale Divinity School and the couple left New Haven for Wheeling, West Virginia. However, according to the Skinner family, Martin abandoned Emma at a boarding house where she died from illness on April 23rd while Martin returned home to Washington, D.C.²

Martin enrolled at Howard Law School, graduating from the school in 1894. He moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where he worked as an attorney. Throughout his life in Kansas City, he worked in city government, first as an assistant prosecuting attorney and then as secretary of the city engineer in 1898, a position he continued to work in until his death. He remained an active partisan in Republican politics and was elected several leadership positions such as chairman of the Colored Republicans of the Ninth Ward, chairman of the Eureka Republican Club, and vice president of the Negro Republican State League. He was later nominated to join a Republican primary delegation in 1900. He died on December 15, 1907 from tuberculosis.³