Hello,
Welcome and thank you for being here!
My name is Connie Robinson, and I am a product of sharecroppers. My grandmother is part Cherokee/African American, and she was a badass, 6ft tall, sharp as a machete, and although she never entered high school, she was smart as a whistle.

I was fortunate to come from a line of strong black women. I credit her with being honest and open with me about her upbringing in the Jim Crow Era and with teaching me about politics since I was 12 years old. I was raised by a single mother and a grandmother who both valued me.

My mother would see a kid walking past our home, and if they looked depressed and down, she would intervene and ask them… what’s the matter? Why do you look so down? What’s going on? And she literally would be counseling them right in our living room; she took the time to give a damn about humanity, and it's been ingrained in my DNA ever since. My mother was such a force in our community; when she died, there was standing room only at her funeral…literally, the church was packed. I was not aware of how powerfully impactful she was. I was literally asking my sister, " Who are all these people? I had no idea the connections she was making and the impact she was having on so many people's lives. I was too spoiled and self-absorbed to realize just how amazing she was…I mean, I sort of knew…But I didn’t know, KNOW!!

Today, I am a mother, a grandmother, a domestic abuse SURVIVOR,an educator, a future blues historian, a professor, and an advocate for social justice and equality for all.

As a former food stamps and welfare recipient, I am overwhelmed at my accomplishments thus far, coming from a single-parent home, in a family of cotton-picking Po’ Dunk, sharecroppers out of Arkansas. Because of them, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps. So, when I walk across this vast campus to go to work every day in a position of leadership, I’m gratefully floored and overjoyed by GOD’s Grace over my life.

I am currently pursuing my doctorate, and I plan to use it to further my studies on the intersection of history, racial weathering, and the blues that changed the world.

I want to end racism now!! I want to be remembered as a world-renowned lecturer who used her voice to move the country forward.