Amelia Boynton
Robinson, a civil rights activist who helped lead the 1965 "Bloody
Sunday" voting rights march and was the first black woman to run for
Congress in Alabama, died early Wednesday at age 104, her son Bruce Boynton
said.
Boynton Robinson
was among those beaten during the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, Alabama, in March 1965 that became known as "Bloody Sunday."
State troopers teargased and clubbed marchers as they tried crossing the
bridge. A newspaper photo featuring an unconscious Boynton Robinson drew wide
attention to the movement.
"The truth
of it is that was her entire life. That's what she was completely taken
with," Bruce Boynton said of his mother's role in shaping the civil rights
movement. "She was a loving person, very supportive — but civil rights was
her life."
Fifty years after
"Bloody Sunday," Barack Obama, the first black president of the
United States, held her hand as she was pushed across the bridge in a
wheelchair during a commemoration.
"She was as
strong, as hopeful, and as indomitable of spirit — as quintessentially American
— as I'm sure she was that day 50 years ago," Obama said Wednesday in a
written statement. "To honor the legacy of an American hero like Amelia
Boynton requires only that we follow her example — that all of us fight to
protect everyone's right to vote."
Boynton Robinson,
hospitalized in July after a stroke, turned 104 on Aug. 18. Her family said in
a written statement that she was surrounded by loved ones when she died around
2:20 a.m. at a Montgomery, Alabama hospital.
In January,
Boynton Robinson attended the State of the Union address as a special guest of
Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Alabama, who said Boynton Robinson's 1964 run for Congress
paved the way for her as Alabama's first elected black congresswoman. Boynton
was the first black woman to run for Congress in the state and the first
Alabama woman to run as a Democrat, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.
Sewell said in
January that Boynton refused to be intimidated and ultimately saw the impact of
her work when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law. Boynton
Robinson was invited as a guest of honor to attend the signing by President
Lyndon B. Johnson.
Lewis, D-Georgia,
called Boynton Robinson fearless and said in a written statement that she was
one of the civil rights movement's most dependable and tireless leaders.
"I am so
glad she lived to see Dr. King lead a march from Selma to Montgomery, that she
lived to see the Voting Rights Act signed into law, that she lived to see the
amazing transformation our work gave rise to in America," Lewis said.
Boynton Robinson
worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, helped organize the
Selma to Montgomery march and asked Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Selma to
galvanize the local community.
The Rev. C.T.
Vivian worked closely with King and said he knew Boynton Robinson when she
lived in Selma. Through fighting for voting rights, she and others were
fighting for the right to be considered fully American at a time when black
people were still being denied basic freedoms, Vivian said.
"You just
don't know how cruel, how non-thinking, how devilish, how hateful people could
be. Just to hear this brings it all out for me," Vivian said. "It
just hurts."
