Sitting on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwest South Dakota, the Wounded Knee Battlefield is the venue of the last major confrontation between the United States Army and Native Americans. The locale was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.

Five years later, writer and historian Dee Brown published his most noted work, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. The title of Brown’s magnum opus was taken from the final line of Stephen Vincent Benet’s 1927 poem “American Names” which had likely been a reference to the Lakota leader Crazy Horse, whose heart was buried at Wounded Knee following his murder in 1877. The book became one of the seminal accounts of the Native Americans’ plight.

Ninety-six years later, thirty-five-year-old Ray Robinson is believed to have been buried at Wounded Knee following his murder. However, exactly what happened to the civil rights activist who moonlighted for Native American rights is unclear. His remains have never been found.

Wounded Knee, noted for its infamous history, is also the center of an infamous mystery.

Ray Robinson

Ray Robinson became active in the Civil Rights Movement in his early twenties. He participated in the 1963 March on Washington where he was among the estimated 250,000 people who heard Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Following King’s assassination in April 1968, Robinson was among those who further organized Resurrection City, a camp established by King at the Washington Mall calling attention to the plight of the poor people of color in the South.

In the photo, Robinson is forcibly detained during a May 1968 demonstration in Washington, D.C.

Civil Rights Activist

Robinson traveled to Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in April 1973, after learning of the ongoing occupation of the area by the American Indian Movement (AIM). Two months earlier, AIM had seized the town and surrounding area, protesting the federal government’s broken treaties and policies toward Native Americans. The locale on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the southwestern part of the state was chosen for symbolic value.

In 1890, nearly three-hundred Lakota Indians had been killed by United States Army soldiers in what became known as the Wounded Knee Massacre. For AIM, it was not remember the Alamo; it was remember Wounded Knee.

After several armed confrontations between the AIM members and the government, Wounded Knee was returned to federal government control in May. The seventy-one-day siege had resulted in four deaths, fourteen injuries, and one missing person.

Robinson Goes To Wounded Knee

Ray Robinson had sought to show his support for the Indians’ protests in hopes of uniting the rights movements of blacks and Native Americans. Instead of aligning the minority groups, he appears to have alienated AIM members.

Around April 25, approximately one week after arriving at Wounded Knee, Robinson disappeared. His wife Cheryl traveled to the area and spoke to AIM representatives. Most denied knowing her husband had been at Wounded Knee.

No Trace Of Ray

In 2001, while attempting to interview her former common-law husband, AIM co-founder Dennis Banks, about the 1976 murder of Anna Mae Aquash, former AIM member turned FBI informant Darlene Ka-Mook Nichols says Banks told her that Ray Robinson had been shot and bled to death while he and a group of AIM members were under siege. Because the civil rights activist had fallen out of favor with them, Darlene says Banks told her he ordered AIM member Chris Westerman to bury him where he would never be found. Westerman is the brother of the late actor and musician Floyd Red Crow Westerman.

Nichols’ testimony as a material witness helped to later convict two AIM members of Ana Mae Aquash’s murder.

Darlene Ka-Mook Nichols

Although he later made similar statements regarding Ray Robinson during an interview with Indian Country News in 2007, Banks denied his former wife’s claim, saying he had no knowledge of Robinson’s being at Wounded Knee.

Dennis Banks died in 2017.

Dennis Banks

The FBI conducted an investigation into Ray Robinson’s disappearance but did not make the results public for over forty years until a request submitted by his wife, Cheryl, and her daughter Tamara Kamara under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 2014.

The findings suggested several possibilities, but all led to the same conclusion: Ray Robinson’s life came to a brutal end at Wounded Knee.

Tamara Kamara And Cheryl Robinson

Ray Robinson’s Daughter And Wife

Several unnamed AIM members interviewed by the FBI said Robinson had drawn their ire immediately upon arriving at Wounded Knee due to their differing philosophies. In the civil rights movement, Robinson was an adherent of Martin Luther King’s nonviolent approach, in stark contrast to the AIM practice of armed resistance to the federal government. One account holds that Robinson and AIM members engaged in a heated argument over tactics, during which Robinson was shot to death.

Another account purports that Robinson further encountered the wrath of the AIM hierarchy because he ate freely, even though he was told of the limited food supply. Some said the anger toward Robinson came to a boil when an AIM leader ordered him to a meeting. Robinson was said to have been shot in a bunker because he refused to attend the meeting until he was done eating his oatmeal.

After being dragged outside and beaten, AIM members say Robinson was taken to Wounded Knee Medical Clinic, which was run by AIM members. The doctors and nurses are said to have abandoned efforts to save him after becoming overrun with wounds to AIM members. Robinson, it is alleged, was put in a closet where he bled to death.

Varying Accounts

Of Ray Robinson’s End

The FBI documents confirm that Ray Robinson was murdered and buried at Wounded Knee. They do not, however, shed any light on the specific location of his remains.

If you have information on the murder of Ray Robinson please contact the office of South Dakota State Attorney General’s office at 605-773-3331 or email at [email protected]

Where Buried At Wounded Knee?

Before fighting for civil rights, Ray Robinson had fought in the ring. His great physical strength and athletic prowess earned him some success as a boxer.

He is not, however, the famous pugilist “Sugar” Ray Robinson, nor is he related to the boxing legend.

The Other Ray Robinson

SOURCES:

• The Guardian
• New York Post
• New York Times
• Rapid City Journal