Public Health and Hospital Desegregation Research

This variety of experience in factories lent itself well to her next focus in occupational medicine and public health research at Johns Hopkins. She worked in public health research at Johns Hopkins for a total of 17 years. During this time, Robinson took a few courses at Johns Hopkins and began to bridge her interest in public health activism with some of her roots in social justice activism, with projects such as this paper investigating the history of hospital desegregation in Maryland. 

In this preface to her paper, Robinson explains her interest in the topic of hospital desegregation was the connection between her background in civil rights activism (especially with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and her home in Baltimore. 

Robinson's plan for the paper includes an outline and a page of the resources she anticipated using, including both archival materials and interviews with people who were involved with the process of desegregating hospitals. This paper plan shows her scholarship and interest in history, which would later lead her to teach a course on the history of social justice organizing in Baltimore.

It also shows her interest in personal accounts as historical resources, which later led her to offer her own accounts in oral history projects as well as organizing SNCC legacy projects, including several SNCC legacy groups and serving as an editor and contributor to the volume Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. 

Robinson's papers include copies of many of the primary source materials she used in writing this essay, including archival materials like this statement by the Hospital Council of Maryland, Inc. that affirmed their commitment to providing medical care to patients regardless of race.