The story of Eroseanna Robinson, a bad ass Black skate activist in the 1950s.
It was another young African American woman who would take the most blows from the skaters intent on keeping Skateland [a segregated rink in Cleveland, Ohio] white. Eroseanna (Sis) Robinson was a young staff member at a Cleveland community center in 1952. …
….Robinson, who had attended an interracial workshop sponsored by CORE in 1951, decided to take on the project of desegregating Skateland. One Saturday afternoon she brought three children from the community center, two black and one white, to skate at the rink. After much delay the manager gave them skates, but as soon as they were out on the rink a group of teenage boys repeatedly tripped them.
Robinson returned to the rink several days later in the evening, accompanied by a white friend, a male graduate student sympathetic to radical nonviolence. During that visit white customers constantly harassed them, and the rink guards refused to intervene in the escalating threats and violence.
The following evening Robinson returned with more friends for support. This time as soon as she skated out on the rink a group of white men assaulted her. Robinson fell and cut her knee badly, but she got up and kept skating. She was tripped again, and again she got up.
This continued — not a sit-in or a stand-in but a skate-in that required constant motion and a high tolerance for pain. Robinson had been a track star in college and described herself as a “better than average skater,” so she was able to fend off her attackers with her speed and agility for a time.
Finally, after a violent shove, Robinson crashed to the floor and broke her arm. Only then did she agree to leave and seek medical attention.
From Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America by Victoria W. Wolcott (2012)