This is the infamous photo of Amelia Boynton Robinson being gassed and beaten while marching for the right to vote. She was eventually left for dead after being beaten with a billy club for her participation in a peaceful march (across the Edmund Pettus Bridge) for the right to vote. Evidence that this photo went around the world is the fact this is an original press photo from a Latin American country (everything is in Spanish).
Click here to see the autographed copy of Ms. Boynton Robinson’s autobiography.
Amelia’s home and office in Selma became the center of Selma’s civil rights battles and was used by Martin Luther King, James Bevel, and others to plan demonstrations for civil and voting rights. While Selma had a population that was 50 percent black, only 1 percent of the town’s African American residents were registered as voters. To protest this state of affairs, Robinson helped organize a march to Montgomery, initiated by James Bevel, which took place on March 7, 1965. Led by John Lewis, Hosea Williams and Bob Mants, and including Rosa Parks and others among the marchers, the event became known as Bloody Sunday when local and state police stopped the march and beat demonstrators as they were crossing Edmund Pettus Bridge. Robinson herself was beaten unconscious; a picture of her lying on Edmund Pettus Bridge went around the world. Another short march led by Martin Luther King took place two days later, and a third march reached Montgomery on March 24. The horror of Bloody Sunday contributed to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965; Robinson was a guest of honor when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.
Photo of Mrs. Boynton Robinson with the trooper is the photo that is part of the collection (not the other photos from Bloody Sunday.