Person · 1911–2015
Amelia Boynton Robinson
A Selma voting-rights organizer beaten unconscious on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday; she had registered Black voters in Alabama for decades and helped plan the 1965 marches.
Amelia Boynton Robinson (1911–2015) spent decades registering Black voters in Alabama and helped plan the 1965 Selma marches. On Bloody Sunday, she was beaten unconscious on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the photograph of her body — carried in newspapers worldwide — helped turn the nation toward the Voting Rights Act. In 1964 she had become the first Black woman to run for Congress from Alabama. In 2015, at the 50th anniversary, she crossed the bridge again, holding President Obama's hand.