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Marius Robinson (1806–1878) was an American minister, abolitionist, and newspaper editor of the antislavery newspaper The Philanthropist and The Anti-Slavery Bugle. He helped establish a school for African Americans in Cincinnati, Ohio while attending Lane Seminary. Responding to backlash from the city's residents, he continued to teach and was one of the who would not be pressured to give up improving the lives of African Americans. He was an anti-slavery lecturer. He worked together with his wife Emily Rakestraw Robinson, to better the lives of African Americans.
In 1829, his education continued under the missionary and scholar Reverend Potter at the Creek Path Mission in the Cherokee Nation. As an assistant, he worked with the Native American children. After one year, he accepted a position as an assistant at the Presbyterian Church in Florence, Alabama. Around 1829, Robinson found his personal beliefs aligned with those of the Second Great Awakening, which was led by Charles Grandison Finney. He believed in the importance of good works and humanitarian reforms, which led to abolitionism and the anti-slavery movement.
Robinson enrolled at the University of Nashville's five-year program in the fall of 1830. He studied theology, and some of his teachers were suspicious of his liberal views. He graduated with high honors in 1832, but he did not receive his diploma until he delivered a lecture on a test question, with approval by the North Alabama Presbytery. While at the University of Nashville, Robinson met Theodore Weld, a liberal theologian and co-founder of the Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. Robinson enrolled at Lane Seminary that taught Charles Grandison Finney's New School principles.
Robinson was among the Lane students who were committed to abolitionism and were directly involved in practices to aid African Americans. He took a year off from the seminary to help Augustus Wattles establish a school for Black adults and children. The curriculum included arithmetic, grammar, geography, natural philosophy, and Bible study. Some of the city's residents were critical of educational and other abolitionist activities. After the school's Board of Trustees ordered the students to stop their projects, Robinson and 39 other students protested and withdrew from the seminary. Called the , they were the most influential group of abolitionists in the West.
In 1836, he was ordained as an evangelist by the New York Central Evangelical Association of Jamestown, New York. He was commissioned "to labor in and with the churches to arouse them to a sense of their responsibility in the institution of American slavery".
In 1836, Robinson was hired by the antislavery newspaper The Philanthropist, which was established by the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. James G. Birney was its editor. A mob attacked the newspaper office on July 30, 1836. Robinson escaped and rode horseback with the forms for the paper, which he had published in Wilmington, Delaware. Birney and Robinson returned to the office in Cincinnati after a few days with no further threats or violence.
Robinson was a Presbyterian minister. An abolitionist, he lectured about slavery, emancipation, and theological subjects from 1830 to 1865. He spoke at the American Anti-Slavery Society in Ohio. Emily remained in Cincinnati and taught while Robinson worked the lecture circuit. When pro-slavery mobs descended on the abolitionists, women were often successful in curbing the violence by putting themselves between the mob and the intended target. Mrs. Garretson stepped in to aid Robinson when he was being attacked in Berlin, Trumbull County, Ohio in June 1837. Mrs. Garretson was attacked and injured. The mob then sliced Robinson's leg, beat him, and tarred and feathered him. Although he was taken out of town, Robinson was able to get a suit of clothes to wear and walked back to Berlin, where he delivered his speech. Left ill, Robinson recuperated at home for around a month before returning to the lecture circuit. His voice gave out and poor health kept him bed-ridden for months. Pro-slavery factions were dangerous for outspoken abolitionists, as Robinson noted following the death of Elijah Parish Lovejoy (died November 7, 1837), "I fear we are not yet at the worst in our conflict with slavery. Blood I fear must yet flow and persecution more bitter and rancorous succeed..." For ten years, he lived on a farm in Putnam, Ohio.
The anti-slavery movement gained momentum in Ohio during the 1840s. In 1850, he became the president of the Western Antislavery Society, which was centered in Salem, Ohio, and had members from Ohio, southern Michigan, Indiana, and western Pennsylvania. On May 24, 1851, he became the publisher of the society's successful newspaper, The Anti-Slavery Bugle, which operated out of Salem, Ohio. Robinson supported the positions of the eastern radical group of abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Edmund Quincy, and adopted the slogan "No Union with Slaveholders". He also supported women's rights and temperance and was against war and capital punishment. His wife Emily, one of the earliest antislavery feminists, became the agent for the paper until 1854, resigning following the death of their daughter Cornelia. He attended and reported on the national disunion convention held in Cleveland on October 28, 1857, which had been called for by Garrison's newspaper The Liberator. He retired from the paper in February 1859. He operated a hat store in Salem and later was president of the Ohio Mutual Fire Insurance Company. He was an active fund-raiser and speaker during the American Civil War. Emily continued her reform work after the war.
Robinson was an Underground Railroad agent, helping people escape slavery. He was affiliated with the American Colonization Society.
He died in Salem, Ohio on December 9, 1878. (Nye stated that he died in 1870.) Emily died on July 20, 1897, at the age of 86.
Marius Racine Robinson's papers are held at the Western Reserve Historical Society. Emily wrote Our Old Anti-Slavery Tent after Susan B. Anthony requested that she record her memories.
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