“It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Amelia Boynton Robinson, known as the matriarch of the voting rights movement, died on Wednesday morning in Montgomery, Ala. She was 104.
Portrayed by acclaimed actress Lorraine Touissant in Ava DuVernay’s Oscar-nominated Selma, Boynton Robinson was hospitalized in July after suffering a major stroke.
Born in Savannah, Georgia, the civil rights activist and Tuskegee University graduate was among those beaten during the voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. That event became known as “Bloody Sunday.” During a commemoration fifty years later, Mrs. Boynton Robinson crossed the bridge again, this time in a wheelchair, and under the escort of the first black U.S. President, Barack Obama.
A photo of marcher Amelia Boynton lying unconscious in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge after being beaten unconscious by an Alabama trooper.
FILE - In this March 7, 1965 file photo, S.W. Boynton is carried and another injured man tended to after they were injured when state police broke up a demonstration march in Selma, Ala. Boynton, wife of a real estate and insurance man, has been a leader in civil rights efforts. The day, which became known as “Bloody Sunday,” is widely credited for galvanizing the nation’s leaders and ultimately yielded passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (AP Photo/File)
Funeral arrangements for Boynton Robinson, the first woman to run on a Democratic ticket in Alabama and the first black woman to run for Congress in the state, are being finalized.
Comments
RIP.