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James Hathaway Robinson was born in 1887 in Sharpsburg, Kentucky to Nathaniel Robinson and Martha Summers Robinson. He graduated from Fisk University in 1911, and joined the Yale class of 1912. He was a recipient of the University Scholarship. After graduating from Yale College in 1912, he received a Larned Fellowship at Yale and completed a master's degree in economics. He was the first Black student to receive a Yale fellowship.

In 1916, he married Neola Estella Woodson, with whom he had two children.

Receiving a fellowship from the Urban League, he studied sociology and social service at Columbia University, then taught for a few years at Douglass High School in Cincinnati and at the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia. Starting in 1917, he was executive secretary of Cincinnati’s Negro Civic Welfare Association, an organization that served to coordinate and support social work efforts across the city. His work included establishing two childcare centers, developing a recreational and industrial program, and supporting Black social agencies. He helped found the Shoemaker Health and Welfare Center and served as its superintendent.

In 1929, he returned to Nashville, serving as the supervisor of a Black social services department within the Tennessee State Department of Welfare and teaching at Fisk University.

He began pursuing a PhD in sociology at Yale, graduating in 1934. While finishing his degree, he began teaching sociology at Wilberforce University. He served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Wilberforce from 1939 to 1949, and was also the Ohio state supervisor for the National Youth Administration.

He began teaching at Morris Brown College in 1949, where he also served as a dean and as chair of the Department of Sociology. Robinson was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, numerous academic and professional organizations in the fields of sociology, history, social work, and political science, and Fisk and Yale alumni organizations. In the 1920s, he served as national president of the Fisk Alumni Association.

Robinson died in Atlanta in 1963. One of his grandsons, Dr. Forrester “Woody” Lee, is a 1979 graduate and longtime faculty member of the Yale School of Medicine.