CALVIN ROBINSON
\n1922-1926<\/p>\n
In 1922, sixteen-year old Calvin Robinson left the small town of Onancock, on Virginia\u2019s Eastern Shore, to join Richmond College\u2019s freshman class. On the college\u2019s new campus at the city\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2014in the heat of the Scopes \u201cmonkey\u201d trial\u2014both Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. Robinson recorded the \u201cnotable personages\u201d in a page from his senior scrapbook. Like other city-dwellers, Robinson was increasingly attuned to an emerging mass culture.<\/p>\n
Selections from Calvin Robinson scrapbook and yearbook, 1922, Courtesy of Boatwright Library<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"