Bill Robinson - Legacy

Legacy

A statue of Bill Robinson sculpted by Jack Witt in Richmond, Virginia, at the intersection of Adams and West Leigh Streets.

Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.

Despite earning and spending a fortune his memories of surviving on the streets as a child never left him, prompting many acts of generosity. In 1933, while in his hometown of Richmond, he saw two children risk speeding traffic to cross a street to get their ball, because there was no stoplight at the intersection. Robinson went to the city and provided the money to have one installed. In 1973, a statue of "Bojangles" was erected in a small park at that intersection.

Bojangles co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948, after Major League Baseball was desegregated and began to absorb the top Black talent available.

In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared "National Tap Dance Day" to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.

Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.