
Robinson was a former professional boxer who was an employee of a textile brokerage and a well-known figure in the black community. His ancestry includes Cherokee, enslaved African-Americans, Irish planters, and a Confederate sheriff. Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns (1924–2015), a 16-year-old high school student and her 33-year-old married neighbor, Noah Louis Robinson (1908–1997).
