Amelia Boynton Robinson – A Biography: Matriarch of the Voting Rights Movement

Amelia Boynton Robinson, a prominent activist for voting rights, was beaten unconscious for her efforts. This biography will take the reader back in time to listen and see through the eyes of Amelia what it was like to live in the Black Belt in the city of Selma and Dallas County rural areas during the Jim Crow era. You will get a clear feeling of what was like to be Black in the South in the 1930s up through the 1960s. Boynton Robinson’s distinguished efforts in Selma, specifically related to planning and participating in the historic 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery, has earned for her the designated and honorary title: “Matriarch of the Voting Rights Movement.” A symbolic photo of her sprawled out in the street became the iconic picture that immortalized the march now known as “Bloody Sunday.” The graphic footage shocked the nation and moved President Johnson to release a statement protesting the brutality of the police running rampant over the defenseless protesters. Pictures were shown on television across the nation of lawmen smashing billy clubs across the heads of marchers, as well as stampeding by foot and on horseback as they ran over the demonstrators. Many were injured and bruised with the scars and trauma from that day lasting for the rest of their lives. Amelia, along with her husband Samuel William “Bill” Boynton, felt and showed compassion for the people of Selma and Dallas County. Bill and Amelia saw that the poor, disenfranchised Blacks in Selma and Dallas County needed help in seeing that they were just one step above slavery with no future in farming as sharecroppers. The Boyntons knew that the black people in Selma were emancipated, however, the problem was that the Blacks in Selma didn’t realize they needed help because most didn’t understand that as sharecroppers they were living just this one step above enslavement themselves. And some Blacks in Dallas County and Selma were even living like indentured servants, that is, being promised something that the plantation owners and white landlord overseers knew they weren’t going to get, namely, their own land and property or freedom. Amelia’s son Bruce Boynton summarizes it up best. Bruce explains that to some his mother is considered to be the “Mother of the Voting Rights Act.” The movement started in Selma, Alabama, long before Dr. King arrived on the scene. As the late Rev. James L. Bevel stated following the 1995 performance in Washington D.C. of the play, “Through The Years,” which was written by Amelia in 1936, “Before the world knew that there was a Martin Luther King, Jr., C.T. Vivian, Andrew Young, or Hosea Williams, or before Bernard Lafayette, James Bevel, John Lewis, Marion Barry or Diane Nash were born, Amelia and her husband Bill were fighting for literacy and voting rights in Selma for African American people with love. But with threats and rage, Whites tried to run the Boyntons out of town. However, this didn’t stop them as they continued teaching blacks how to vote, and manage their finances; they continued and initiated the revitalization of the Dallas County Voting Rights League in the early 1930s. The Boyntons were the first Blacks in Alabama to own an insurance company, as well as a real estate and employment agency. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. along with Amelia Boynton Robinson and seven other Congressmen would draft the first blue print of the voting rights act on the kitchen table at her home 1315 Lapsley St. Dr. King came to Selma on January 2, 1965, and set up SCLC’S Headquarters at Amelia Boynton’s home and office. Though he was not present at Bloody Sunday, he led the subsequent March to Montgomery on March 21, 1965, which led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. The Boynton Insurance Agency was in downtown Selma. This was the SCLC center during the March on Montgomery.