Amelia Boynton Robinson
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Ready to put her life on the line for a principle: Amelia Boynton Robinson, unconscious, is held by another marcher on the Edmund Pettus Bridge into Mongomery, Alabama on "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965. A leader of the march, she had been run over, tear-gassed, and clubbed by mounted state police. But it was only an apparent defeat. | |||||||||
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A victory for the nation. Mrs. Robinson shakes hands with President Lyndon Johnson at the White House in the Fall of 1965. Johnson had just signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the direct result of the Alabama and Mississippi struggles.
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"A voteless people is a hopeless people." The first black woman ever to seek a Congressional seat in Alabama, Amelia Boynton ran in 1964 to try to increase the black voter registration level in her district, which was only 5%. She won 50% of the vote. | |||||||||
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Mrs. Robinson gives the 2001 commencement address to the graduating class of Loudoun Valley High School in Virginia.
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In a scene repeated all over the world, Amelia Robinson signs copies of her autobiography for students and teachers at an elementary school in Virginia, who have just been touched directly by their nation's most vital history. | |||||||||