CALVIN ROBINSON
1922-1926

In 1922, sixteen-year old Calvin Robinson left the small town of Onancock, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, to join Richmond College’s freshman class. On the college’s new campus at the city’s western edge, this son of a Baptist minister threw himself into collegiate life. Robinson wrote for the Collegian, pledged Sigma Phi Epsilon, presided over the Debating Council, and managed the Spiders baseball team.

Off campus, Robinson and his friends explored the city. Richmond in the 1920s bustled with new Model T Fords, high-rise hotels, and movie palaces such as Loews State and the Byrd. The celebrities of the day arrived as well: among them Babe Ruth, prizefighter Jack Dempsey, band leader John Phillips Sousa, and—in the heat of the Scopes “monkey” trial—both Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. Robinson recorded the “notable personages” in a page from his senior scrapbook. Like other city-dwellers, Robinson was increasingly attuned to an emerging mass culture.

Selections from Calvin Robinson scrapbook and yearbook, 1922, Courtesy of Boatwright Library