What Happens When Someone Makes Waves: The Life and Death of Frank J. Robinson (Part 3 - Nov 19, 2023)

by Scott Sosebee

This is the last installment of the Frank Robinson story.

Frank Robinson’s October 1976 death immediately began an outcry among family, civil rights leaders, and others in Texas. When the Palestine Police arrived on the scene during the evening hours of October 13, their initial conclusion and observation was that Frank J. Robinson, a man who had just initiated another campaign to right a civil rights wrong, had committed suicide. Investigators noted that Robinson’s screen door to a room that was connected to the garage was cut, which might indicate a break-in, but they found nothing else in the house or garage disturbed. Robinson’s ubiquitous thick, black-framed glasses—which he never removed until he went to bed at night—had been folded and placed neatly on top of a filing cabinet in his office. Next to Robinson’s lifeless body was a sawed-off shotgun. To those detectives, this looked like a number of self-inflicted deaths they had seen in their careers.

However, there were parts of Robinson’s death that were inconsistent with suicide. Dorothy Robinson insisted that Frank did not own that shotgun and that she had never once seen it around their home; Frank’s brother-in-law, with whom he was close, also told the police that the gun was not Frank’s. Dorothy also asserted that there was nothing in her husband’s life that would have remotely led him to take his own life. She adamantly maintained that Frank Robinson was energized and looking forward to his campaign to force the city of Palestine to also adopt single-member districts, and that he had never shown any indication of any sort of melancholy, a mood that often accompanied those who took their own lives. Such avowals did not matter to the Palestine police department. In their minds, this was an open and shut case of suicide.

They may have decided that, but the evidence they chose to ignore was significant. A group of young men, students at the elementary school adjacent to the Robinson house, had told police that they had heard at least two and perhaps as many as four shotgun blasts in the direction of the Robinson home. How Frank Robinson could have shot himself with a powerful shotgun more than once either never occurred to the investigators or they did not care. Dorothy also swore, and the police discounted, that Frank’s arms were not near long enough to hold the gun and pull the trigger in the place in which his wound was centered. There were also three spent shells outside the Robinson’s home, and evidence of shotgun blasts in the fender of Dorothy’s car, as well as in a bag of mulch in the garage where Frank was found. In the eyes of Robinson’s friends, family, and supporters, such signaled that there may have been a struggle, or perhaps that a potential killer was chasing Robinson. A test of the shells at a Texas Department of Public Safety lab confirmed that those shells were indeed fired from the shotgun found near Robinson’s body.

Such evidence was not the only discrepancy in the police’s theory of suicide. Frank had taken his car in for service the morning of his death, and a mechanic from the shop had returned and parked it in the driveway, but when Frank’s body was found, the car was inside the garage. If Frank had shot himself next to the car—and in the position he was found he would have had to—then the car would have had blood spray and other matter somewhere on its exterior. However, the car was completely clean, almost as if it had been freshly washed. Frank Robinson was also a frequent writer and a man who quite often felt a need to explain and document almost everything he did; however, he left no suicide note, no letter to his wife. Numerous tests on the supposed suicide weapon produced no fingerprints that belonged to Frank Robinson, which the police explained away as not uncommon with people of Robinson’s age. Curiously, there was no gunpowder residue on Robinson’s hands, body, or clothing, which would be almost impossible if a shotgun was fired at close range, and particularly if it had been fired multiple times. The shotgun was a double-action “break” loading weapon, which meant it could fire two shells then had to be popped open and then reloaded. The police found the three spent shells and there was another unfired shell in the gun. Would a man who was intent on committing suicide fire the weapon twice, reload, and then fire it again?

Besides the physical evidence and its discrepancies, there were other factors to consider that point away from suicide. Inside Robinson’s jacket was a list of clothing that he intended to purchase, most of them items that meant he was preparing for winter. That morning, he had left his home and gone to the post office and into the East Texas National Bank, where he had asked a teller to mail him some information about his account. Robinson’s supporters also pointed out why the Palestine police might be so firm about declaring Robinson’s death a suicide. His campaign against the city of Palestine changed the makeup of the city council, a body that had the power to fire the police chief, the head of an office that had often been accused of ill-treatment toward and bias against African Americans. The removal of Frank Robinson might alter such a scenario.

Despite the quick closing of the case by the Palestine police, Justice of the Peace Floyd Hassell believed there were enough questions to order an inquest into the cause of death. Such an action began on November 15, 1976. The Texas Attorney General’s office sent Anthony Sadberry, who was African American, to help conduct the proceeding. At the inquest, a pathologist from Lufkin testified that he thought the wound that killed Robinson was consistent with suicide and that the barrel of the gun had been pressed directly against Robinson’s forehead. However, on examination by Sedberry, the pathologist admitted that it was “possible” that someone else shot Robinson, although he thought that “unless the victim was unconscious. . .the reflex would have been to pull away.” However, another expert witness, a former employee of the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office, testified that in his opinion Robinson’s wounds were inconsistent with a self-inflicted shot. Another witness, one of the boys at the elementary school, told the court that he not only heard the shots that day but that he saw a white van in front of the Robinson house.

In all, there were thirty-five witnesses presented at the four-day inquest, but despite the many questions, it did not matter. The inquest panel unanimously agreed with the police investigation and ruled that Frank Robinson, Jr. killed himself. Robinson’s friends and family were convinced that the jury got it wrong, but the decision meant that suicide became the official cause of death. Was it a correct decision? Researcher and author E.R. Bills, who has done extensive work on the Robinson case, is convinced that justice has not been rendered. He has called the death of Frank Robinson an assassination. He may be exactly correct.

The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu; www.easttexashistorical.org.