Amelia Boynton Robinson

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Amelia Boynton Robinson

Amelia Boynton Robinson (* 18th August 1911 in Savannah , Georgia ; † 26. August 2015 in Montgomery , Alabama ) was an American civil rights activist and was considered one of the most influential figures of the civil rights movement (African-American Civil Rights Movement) as well as a of the outstanding employees of Martin Luther King . She played a key role in bringing about the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965 ("Mother of the Voting Rights Movement") .

Life

Amelia Platts was born on August 18, 1911 in Savannah, Georgia, to George Platts and his wife Anna Eliza (née Hicks). The parents had African, European, and Cherokee ancestry. Church and religion played an important role in the upbringing of Amelia and her nine siblings. Amelia first went to the local ( racial ) school. After graduating, she attended Georgia State College (now: Savannah State University ) for two years , then moved to the Tuskegee Institute, Alabama (now: Tuskegee University ), where she graduated in home economics in 1927. She later studied at Tennessee State University (TSU), Virginia State University, and Temple University .

Amelia initially taught at various schools before she took up a position as a home demonstration agent with the US State Department of Agriculture (USDA) for the Dallas County , Alabama area in Selma. She taught the rural population about food production, nutrition, health care and other topics related to agriculture and housekeeping.

In 1930 she met Samuel William Boynton, a county extension agent (see Wikipedia: County extension ) know. She shared Boynton's passion for improving the living conditions of African Americans, many of whom still worked on farms owned by whites or lived as sharecroppers . Robinson (at that time Platts) and Boynton married in 1936 and subsequently worked together to bring suffrage, land ownership and schooling to the poor regions of Alabama. The two became influential votes in the Dallas County section of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) formed in the mid-1920s.

In addition to her political activities, Amelia ran a job placement agency until 1952. After 1952, she and her husband, who had since retired from civil service, founded an insurance agency and a real estate company. Her son, Bruce Carver, who had meanwhile studied law at Howard University , succeeded in a process before the Supreme Court (Boynton v. Virginia (1960)) to reduce the segregation of public transport between the individual states (interstate public transportation) . (see Wikipedia: Boynton v. Virginia )

Even after the death of Samuel William Boynton in 1963, Amelia continued her political activities and became one of the most influential voices of the Civil Rights Movement in western Alabama . In 1964 she became the first African American woman to run for a seat in Congress for the Democratic Party . With the campaign slogan “A voteless people is a hopeless people” (“A people without the right to vote is a people without hope”) , she was able to win ten percent of the votes (in the primaries).

Despite decades of efforts to enforce the right to vote for Afro-Americans, and although over 50 percent of the population of Selma were African-American at the time, only 2 percent of Afro-Americans there had been able to register for the election. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) then mobilized around 300 African Americans, who lined up to register (for an upcoming election). (See Wikipedia: Voter registration in the United States ). Most of them were then arrested. Only about a dozen managed to register for the election. Still too much for a local judge. On July 9, 1964, he issued an order prohibiting three or more people from gathering in public. After this decision, Amelia Boynton contacted Martin Luther King Jr. (She had already met Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King while attending church in Montgomery in 1954.) As a result, she invited King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to Selma to participate in the campaign for enforcement the right to vote for African Americans to get the media attention they deserve. Her apartment and office subsequently became the planning center of the campaign ( Selma-to-Montgomery marches ).

On March 7, 1965 - on so-called "Bloody Sunday" - she was seriously injured in the course of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches that she helped initiate when police officers used peaceful black suffrage demonstrators with brutal violence to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Pictures that showed her lying unconscious on the side of the road after she was bludgeoned by police officers and badly injured and sprayed with tear gas on the ground, only to be left lying helpless so that "let buzzards eat 'em" ("the buzzards eat them") - as the racist county sheriff Jim Clark explained, went around the world, was shown on almost all US television stations and appeared on the front pages of many newspapers. The message from these images was clear: This is how America treats those blacks who dare to claim their constitutional rights and stand up against injustice.

Private

Amelia Boynton Robinson married three times: Her first marriage in 1936 to Samuel William Boynton (see above) lasted until Boynton's death in 1963. In addition to Bill Jr. from Boynton's first marriage, the couple had the son Bruce Carver. In 1969 Amelia Robinson married the musician Bob W. Billups, who died in 1973 as a result of an accident. Amelia then went on to have a third marriage with James Robinson, whom she had known since she was a student at Tuskegee University . The marriage lasted until Robinson's death in 1988.

Autobiography

Amelia Platts Boynton Robinson: Bridge over the Jordan. Dr. Böttiger Verlag , Wiesbaden 2000, ISBN 3-925725-42-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Christopher M. Richardson and Ralph E. Luker: Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement. 2nd ed. 2014, p. 84 f. (Boynton, Amelia (Amelia Platts Boynton Billups Robinson))
  2. ^ Village of Hope Tuskegee - History - Amelia Boynton Robinson
  3. ^ US Department of Agriculture 1951: The Home Demonstration Agent
  4. ^ Civil Rights Teaching: Dallas County Voters League
  5. ↑ United States Supreme Court: Boynton v. Virginia (1960) - Decided December, 5, 1960
  6. ↑ Schiller Institute: On the 40th Anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" March 7, 1965
  7. ↑ Encyclopedia of Alabama: Amelia Boynton Robinson
  8. ↑ James Gardner "Jim" Clark Jr. (born September 17, 1922 in Elba, Coffee County, Alabama; † June 4, 2007 ibid) was sheriff in Dallas County, Alabama from 1955 to 1966 (see en: Jim Clark (sheriff)) )
  9. ↑ Encyclopedia of Alabama: James G. "Jim" Clark Jr.
  10. ↑ NBC News: Sheriff Jim Clark, segregationist icon, dies at 84
  11. ^ Mote and Beam August 11, 2005: Classic Example of Black Liberal Hypocrisy
  12. ^ New York Post December 1, 2014: 103-year-old activist: I was almost killed fighting for freedom
  13. ↑ Black History Collection September 1, 2014: Autobiography - Mother of Voting Rights Movement
  14. ^ New York Post December 1, 2014: 103-year-old activist: I was almost killed fighting for freedom
  15. ↑ The Huffington Post - Black Voices February 24, 2015: 103-Year-Old Civil Rights Icon: 'Thank God I Learned That Color Makes No Difference'
  16. ↑ The Seattle Times March 13, 2015: Memories of Selma, 'Bloody Sunday'
  17. ↑ CNN January 10, 2015: Watching 'Selma' with 103-year-old matriarch of the movement
  18. ↑ Schiller Institute: On the 40th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” March 7, 1965 - Text + image: Amelia / Samuel William “Bill” Boynton + Sons
  19. ↑ Encyclopedia of Alabama: Amelia Boynton Robinson
personal data
SURNAME Robinson, Amelia Boynton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Personality of the American civil rights movement
BIRTH DATE August 18, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Savannah , Georgia
DATE OF DEATH August 26, 2015
PLACE OF DEATH Montgomery , Alabama