Amelia Boynton Robinson began registering Black voters in Selma, Alabama, in the 1930s, decades before the Civil Rights Movement reached national attention. In 1964 she became the first African American woman to run for Congress from Alabama, campaigning on the slogan "A voteless people is a hopeless people."
Boynton Robinson invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Selma to help organise the community, and on 7 March 1965 she helped lead marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in what became known as Bloody Sunday. State troopers beat her unconscious; a photograph of her lying bloodied on the bridge was published worldwide and helped drive passage of the Voting Rights Act five months later.
In 2015, at age 103, she crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge again, hand in hand with President Barack Obama and Congressman John Lewis, on the fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
- First African American woman to run for U.S. Congress from Alabama, 1964
- Co-founder of the Dallas County Voters League
- Central organiser of the Selma to Montgomery marches
- Guest of honour at the 1965 signing of the Voting Rights Act
- Register voters for decades before the cameras ever arrive.. She began voter drives in the 1930s, long before national attention reached Selma.
- Invite the leader your community needs, rather than waiting to be noticed.. She personally invited Dr. King to organise in Selma.
- Let your body bear witness when your voice alone isn't enough.. The photograph of her beating helped drive the Voting Rights Act's passage.