TUSKEGEE, Ala. — The family of Dr. Amelia Boynton Robinson says the 105-year-old Civil Rights movement heroine has been hospitalized after suffering a massive stroke late last month.
“Presently, she is in stable, but critical condition,” said Dr. Boynton Robinson’s family in a letter sent to Yellowhammer. “Her physicians, nurses and other health care providers are working around the clock to give her the best of care and the required medical attention she needs. The Family asks that you continue to lift her up in your prayers for recovery, and to lift up the Family in your prayers as we bind together in our Loved One’s best interest.”
A victim of the brutal beatings on “Bloody Sunday” while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma fifty years ago, Boynton Robinson 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.
A 1927 graduate of the then-Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, 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.”
Dr. Boynton Robinson made headlines in January when she stole the show at the State of the Union Address in Washington, D.C. by telling former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, “People always talk about, ‘I stand on the shoulders of people like you.’ Get off my shoulders, do your own work.”
Dr. Boynton Robinson attended the event as a guest of Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell (D-AL7).
Her family says that her medical bills are mounting quickly and asks those who wish to assist the family contact her daughter Germaine Bowser at (267) 252-7750 or her son Bruce Boynton at (334) 349-3694.
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— Elizabeth BeShears (@LizEBeesh) January 21, 2015
