105-year old Alabamian and civil rights icon Amelia Boynton Robinson was Rep. Terri Sewell’s (AL-07) guest at the State of the Union address last night, but her age didn’t stop her from getting a little sassy and stealing the show.
Before the State of the Union address Boynton Robinson was able to meet with President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Last night Rep. Sewell recalled a particularly amusing interaction between Boynton Robinson and Attorney General Holder.
“Perhaps the funniest thing she said, she said to Eric Holder. She said people always talk about, ‘I stand on the shoulders of people like you. Get off my shoulders, do your own work.'”
A victim of the brutal beatings on “Bloody Sunday” while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma fifty years ago, Boynton is also known for her contributions to the voting rights movements. Her home was used as a field office for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders amidst the voter drives in Selma during the 1960s.
Boynton Robinson ran for Congress in 1964, and though she was unsuccessful her candidacy made her the first African American and first woman to run. In 1990 Boynton was honored for her contributions to the civil rights movement with the Martin Luther King Jr. Medal of Freedom.
She was depicted in the movie Selma by actress Lorraine Toussaint, and when her health precluded her from attending a screening of the film, Paramount Pictures arranged to host a private viewing in her home with some of her closest friends and fellow veterans of the movement. At the conclusion of the film the whole room was emotional, and Boyton Robinson—who has been critical of previous depictions of her place in the civil rights fight—proclaimed “It was good, the movie is fantastic.”
Boynton Robinson’s health also complicated her trip to the Capitol to watch the State of the Union address.
“We didn’t find out until the eleventh hour because … her medical team had to OK her leaving the state of Alabama,” Rep. Sewell said. “I think that for me the most poignant moment was when she got to meet with the president before he spoke, and it was awesome. Really awesome.
“For her to make the journey to Washington, D.C., for the State of the Union and for her to get the chance to meet the president, and for him to say, ‘I am here because of you,’ and her tears, I mean it was special moment.”
Rep. Sewell added, “For me, I think she sums up the movement. Her perseverance, her bravery, her courage, and she was so excited.”
“I feel as though [Rep.] Terri [Sewell] and I have a bond that cannot be broken,” Boynton Robinson said in a statement to The Huffington Post. “I am delighted that she invited me as her guest to hear our President give the State of the Union address. I appreciate the work of her entire staff and my assistants in Tuskegee who helped make my trip to Washington possible. I will forever remember this day.”
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— Elizabeth BeShears (@LizEBeesh) January 21, 2015
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