Cohen, Robert Francis, 1946-

Robert F. Cohen Jr. was born on November 4, 1946. He graduated from Brown in 1968. His father (Robert F. Cohen) also went to Brown, class of 1932.

While at Brown, Cohen spent the spring semester of 1966 at Tougaloo College, as part of Brown’s program with Tougaloo. It was one of the most profound experiences of his life, and served as a foundation for his later political ideas. After returning from Mississippi he spent the summer of 1966 working for George Wiley, a Providence native and one of the most important, yet largely unknown, civil rights leaders of the 1960s, at the Citywide Coordinating Committee of Welfare Rights Groups in New York. This was his first experience with community organizing. Upon his return to school in the fall of 1966 he became involved with Brown’s Campus Action Council (CAC), formed as an alternative to Students for a Democratic Society. CAC was involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement but also linked their work to local issues of poverty and racism. During his involvement with CAC Cohen participated in numerous campaigns, including a sit-in at the State Capitol leading to the passage of a fair housing law as part of the People Against Poverty campaign, anti-recruitment demonstrations aimed at DOW Chemical, the CIA and the military, an educational seminar series, benefit concerts, including one by Pete Seeger, and coalitional work with other student organizations, including their support of the Freedom School that resulted from a boycott by Brown’s African-American students. Cohen served as the President of CAC during the 1967-1968 school year.

After graduating in 1968 he worked at the Catholic Inner City Center in Providence for Father Henry Shelton. Together with another Brown graduate Jim Dickson, class of 1968, Cohen was an organizer for Rhode Island Fair Welfare, affiliated with the National Welfare Rights Organization. Fair Welfare was, at that time, the largest and most powerful organization of poor people in Rhode Island, with 15-20 chapters around the state. They were the first organization to win a campaign for school clothing from the federal Title I education program.

In 1970 he began attending law school at Boston University. While there he worked part-time for the Harvard Center for Law and Education. He graduated from law school in 1973 and moved to Marion County, West Virginia to work for a community organization called the Mountain Community Union around labor, poverty, environmental and other community issues. He passed the bar in West Virginia in 1974. From 1984-2008, he worked with his wife Kathleen Abate and another lawyer, Richard Paul Cohen, in the firm Cohen, Abate & Cohen, continuing his work around welfare rights, civil rights, civil liberties, black lung, mental health, education, and environmental issues through his legal practice. The law firm of Cohen, Abate, & Cohen was dissolved in 2008 after he was appointed to be a commissioner at the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. His term on the commission expires in 2012.