Amelia Boynton Robinson
Amelia Boynton Robinso
1911 – 2015
Civil Rights activist Amelia Boynton Robinson played a significant role in the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Prior to passage of key voting legislation, Robinson helped Dr. King plan and lead the march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery known as “Bloody Sunday.” The term Bloody Sunday is a reference to the violence and bloodshed perpetrated by Alabama law enforcement against peaceful demonstrators.
Robinson is a graduate of the Tuskeegee Institute (currently Tuskeegee university) where she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. She then taught in the state of Georgia before working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in its Selma office as a demonstration agent for Dallas County. Robinson was responsible for educating the Dallas County’s rural population about food production, nutrition, and healthcare amongst other agriculture related subjects.
Robinson met her future husband Samuel William Boynton while living in Selma. Boynton was a county extension agent who had also dedicated his life to improving the lives of Black people. Many of the people Boynton assisted still worked as sharecroppers for white plantation owners.
Robinson and Boynton worked together for decades to bring voting rights, property rights, and better education to poor Black citizens residing in rural Alabama. Since Alabama’s segregationist policies disallowed Black citizens from utilizing Selma’s recreational center, Robinson applied for government funding to build a center for Black citizens. After the grant request failed, Robinson took matters into her own hands and wrote a play, Through the Years, meant to being hope to Selma’s Black population.
Through the Years told the fictional story of a man born into human bondage who overcame his station in life to eventually become a U.S. Congressman. According to Robinson, the play’s main character was inspired by a Robinson family friends that was enslaved, bought his freedom, and became one of the first African American members of Congress, representing South Carolina.
Boynton’s sister, who was a member of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, introduced Robinson to its pastor, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King. Years later, Dr. King and Robinson began working together as the Civil Rights movement started gaining momentum and Robinson was at the center of Selma’s activist movement. Her main goal was increasing the number of registered Black voters. Robinson invited Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to Selma to help bring voting rights to Selma’s Black residents. They then planned the famous Selma to Montgomery marches.
Robinson thought running for office would help motivate Black residents to register to vote. She entered the race with that intent and became the first woman (white or Black) to run on the Democratic ticket in Alabama, and the first Black candidate to run for Congress in Alabama. Robinson did not win the Congressional race, but her legacy of sacrificing for the voting rights of Black people remains.
