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, with Boynton Robinson as President Johnson's guest of honour at the signing.
A voteless people is a hopeless people.
In 2015, at age 103, Boynton Robinson crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge again, hand in hand with President Barack Obama and Congressman John Lewis, on the fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday — closing a fifty-year arc from being beaten on that bridge to being honoured on it.
- 1911Born in Savannah, Georgia.
- 1930sBegins voter registration drives in rural Alabama.
- 1964First African American woman to run for Congress from Alabama.
- 1965Leads the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge; beaten unconscious.
- 1965Attends the signing of the Voting Rights Act as guest of honour.
- 2015Recrosses the bridge with President Obama on its 50th anniversary; dies later that year, aged 104.
- ★ 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