Amelia Boynton Robinson: I am a graduate of Tuskegee Institute. At that time, it used to be Tuskegee Institute, and now it's Tuskegee University. But I'm a graduate of Tuskegee, and I taught for a few months in St. Marys, Georgia, and then Americus, Georgia. While in Americus, I was asked to come to Tuskegee, and it happened that I had charge of the basketball team, so I was on my way to Tuskegee. So I came in, and I was asked to talk with Mr. Tim Campbell, who had charge of the seven North Southern states, as the director. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: And then I filled out an application, and it wasn't long. In April of 1929, I was asked to come to Alabama and to take the county, which was known as Dallas County, and it's in the south central part of the state of Alabama. And when I got there, I found that the county agent, some elderly retired people, and a couple of men who ran on the road as porters, pullman porters, were organized in the Dallas County Voters League, and they were working to get the people to register and vote. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: And it was then I realized that it was very important to get people aroused where they would register. But the younger people like I was, when I was 21, I was 21 when I was in Dallas County, and my husband took me down to the county courthouse, and there I registered, and I became very much concerned about other people, and so did he. So we worked with the people in the rural district, 52,000, and we had only two of us: The county agent who worked with the men and with the boys. I was a home demonstration agent working with the girls and the women, because the girls and the women, well, the girls and boys were organized in the 4-H Club. I'm sure you've heard of the 4-H Club. And unfortunately, the system does everything to set aside African Americans and the contribution they had made. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: For instance, the 4-H Club pledge was that the Dr. Booker T. Washington gave to the country. 4-H Club pledge that they're using now, "I pledge allegiance —" No, it isn't that. "I pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my health for better service, for my club, my community, and my country." "My health." I think I left one out. But anyway, it's being used now, and it was coined by Dr. Booker T. Washington, and it has never changed. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: So we had to work with these young people, and we had to work with the adults in the homemakers' club. That was important. That was what we were supposed to do. But in the meantime, when the atrocities that I witnessed in Dallas County, where people were just like animals. They were controlled. African Americans were controlled. They could work, and these people, 99% of them were on the farms, and they could not think for themselves. They could not go to town when they wanted to, if they were needed on the farm. If a White man decided that that a Negro was too smart, he'd just kill him. And he would go to the city hall or to the county courthouse, and he would say, "Well, I killed John because John made an attempt to kill me." And it was always written off as justifiable homicide, and so many other things. When you read the book, you will see the atrocities people went through. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: When the system, the city fathers, found that we were teaching people how to register and vote, how to get off of the farm, "If you can make and —." My husband would tell them, "If you can make 50 bales of cotton for this White man, you can make 25 bales for yourself." So he would also tell them, "You need to get off of this farm." They were plantations. And many of them would say, "Well, my great-grandfather was brought here as a slave, and I live in the same house that my great-grandfather lived in, and Boss Charlie says that I can stay here as long as I live." And my husband used to tell them, "The only way you're going to stay on this farm is you're going to have to turn into a white faced cow, because he's going to fence his place in, and he's not going to need the labor." And it was true. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: And I used to say to him, "You ought not talk to people like that." He said, "Well, I'm telling them the truth, and I'm giving them the language that they understand. The only way they're going to stay on this White man's farm is they're going to have to turn into a white faced cow, because he is going to fence this farm in and he's going to turn it into cattle farms, which means he's not going to need you. In the meantime, your labor is not going to be needed, because he is going to have mechanical plows, and he's going to use tractors, and he's just not going to need you." 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: We got many people off of the farm who bought land. The highest number of acres we got someone to buy was around 840 acres, from that down to perhaps 10 acres. But they became independent, and this made the city fathers and the plantation owners very angry with us, because we were taking their people off when they still needed them. And registration and voting, the people were very much interested in letting us lead them. Consequently, we worked with them by lamplight, because they didn't have lights, not even in the churches, and we were able to get a number of people to try to register. We got a number to get off of the place. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: But when the city fathers found out that we were bringing and sending so many of them to the courthouse to register, one of them said to my husband, "Why are you bringing these people down here? Haven't we been registering for them, and voting for them all the time? We don't need their votes." And then they began to target us. They ran my husband off of the road, and it happened that he was not hurt. They shot in the house. They said by the telephone, the telephone, one year it would ring every 5 or 10 minutes through the night, starting about 8:00 at night, until about 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning. "Get out of town. Your house is going to be burned. You better not be caught on the street." 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: And all of that caused my husband to have high blood pressure. He had about five strokes. The last stroke he had, he'd just come from the hospital, and a man came in and made an attempt to beat him. It happened that I was there, and I stood between them, and he took his stick after he was thrown out of the office, and he ripped that thick glass all the way down from the top to the bottom. The front door glass and the glass on the outside where we had display windows. And of course he went to the hospital after that, and he never came out again. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: But before leaving, he said, "We have worked nicely together. I want you to see that every Negro is a registered voter." Well, I just felt like I couldn't let him down, because we had gone through too much together, trying to teach them how to fill applications out, encouraging them to go down to the registration office. And before he died, he and I would go down to Montgomery, Birmingham, because it was in '56, I think, or about '56, when Rosa Parks sat on the bus. Now, we knew Dr. King before then. We knew him when he first came into Montgomery as the Pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. And the way we happened to become acquainted with him is because my sister-in-law, my husband's sister, was a member of that church, one of these good members who worked in the church, and who worked with the ministers. And when he first came, we met him. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: So when Rosa Parks sat on the bus and would not leave, would not get up to give this White man a seat, Mr. E.D. Nixon, who at that time was to Montgomery County what we were to Dallas County, and they formed an organization known as the Montgomery Improvement Association, and we would attend the meetings. And I was the second secretary of SELC that was organized at that time, and it was just Alabama, because we were working to get the right to vote. See, my husband had to retire after he had so many strokes. So he went on and started working with registration and voting, and NAACP, and this organization was formed, and it became statewide, and then it became national. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: It was then, when my husband, when I promised him that I'd get people to register, when I went all out, attending the meetings, I asked Dr. King to come into Selma. Well, I didn't know that I had—I knew that I had talked with him. I didn't know that I had written him, until Taylor Branch, whose book on Selma and the parting of the waters wrote this book, and he showed me a copy of the letter that I had written. I didn't know that. And Dr. King said, "Well, we'll have to do what we can." And he sent down, before my husband passed, he sent a young man down. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: The first young man who came down was Bernard Lafayette, who is the President of the Baptist University in Nashville. He organized the young people. They didn't have anywhere to go. A friend of mine who lived in Selma, and who has passed, was the only teacher who opened her doors. All the rest of them were afraid. The people who were business and professional people were afraid. She gave them or rented them one of her houses when he began to organize the students, and that's the way he started. He organized the students. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: He went first to the high school. At that time, it was segregated, with a Black principal. The Black principal ran him off of the campus. And when he left, students left with him. Then he went to Selma University, which is a Black university. The president is Black. His salary came from Black people. He was teaching Black folk. And yet when he went on the campus, this minister, Reverend M.C. Cleveland, told him that he was going to call the offices. When he left, the students left with him, a number of them. And by sowing due, see, he was a part of SNCC, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And when he left, he had two groups. He had the high school group, he had the college group. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: And so many things happened during the time that they were organizing adults. The young people would march down to the office and march to the courthouse. The older people who were not employed would work much more closely than any of the other rivers. But having these 52,000 people, many of them were people who were on the farm, whom he had worked with so long, were the people that I could count on. So they would come in, and the people in the city also, who were not professional, would come in and go down to the registration office, and they were turned down, with the exception of Mrs. Margaret Moore, the teacher who gave one of her apartments for SNCC, the people had nowhere to go. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: So Dr. King came in on January the second, 1965, and I just turned half of my office over to Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and I just turned my entire house over to them, because they had nowhere to stay. The teachers and the professional people would hide. And just like one guy who was the principal of the high school, he said, "You know one thing? When I'd see you and your husband downtown, I would go on the other side of the street, because I didn't know. I didn't want the White folks to see me talking to you. They might think that I was working with you all, so we'd go on the other side of the street." This is the attitude. This is the mentality of the professional, and the business people. So we were out there just about alone. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: Now, the day that my husband died, this young man, and this is before Dr. King came in. This was May the 13th, 1963. Now, my husband said, before he died, "I'd like to see you run for Congress, United States Congress." Of course, I thought it was just all something he was saying. But the day he died, this young man, Irvin Lafayette, had the young people to use their telephones, and call everybody, to call everybody, to call everybody, letting them know that Mr. Boynton had passed, and, "We are going to have a mass meeting down at Tabernacle Baptist Church." 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: In the meantime, the reverend, I mean the sheriff, Jim Clark, had issued a cry to all full-blooded White men to come down to the courthouse and be sworn in as deputies, and they came. They left their turpentine stills, they left their whiskey stills, they left their plows in the field, and came down, and were sworn in and given—Either some of them were given guns, and some of them were given night sticks, and many of them used them. I would go down every day, and I would vouch for people who were trying to register, and vouching for them, I had to tell them that, tell the registrar, "Well, I know John Doe. He lives Route 5 on such and such a person's farm. He is 55 years old. He has so many children." Anything. And that is to establish the fact that each person was a citizen of Dallas County. I had the experience of knowing a whole lot of them, and a lot of them I didn't. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: The registrar was an eighth grader who could not read very well, yet he was White. The applications for registration and voting, at the beginning, was just one page. But when we started bringing these people down, and what we were doing was being done throughout maybe the South, I know it was throughout the whole state of Alabama, the pages started, instead of being one page, they had three or four pages. And then finally it was around eight or 10 pages. And the lawyers had to get dictionaries to find out some of the questions that were asked, and the registrar couldn't even read them. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: Now, these questions would come down just the night before the people, the registration office was open. The registration office, and this is the only time, would be open on the second and fourth Tuesdays in each month. That's all. And the questionnaires would come down on Monday night, in order that the people would not have seen them. But we always got them. We always got them the week before. And nobody was registered. In eight years, we had about four people to register, which meant that it was just a matter of the office being open, and our tax money paying a guy. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: But oh, yes, when I first came to Selma, the people who could not even register had to pay poll tax. Now, if they could not pay poll tax, they would work the road. They would work the road, the county roads, and I don't know how long they would work it, but that was a way they had to work out not being able to pay taxes. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: But going back to the time that my husband passed, and they were asking everybody to come to Tabernacle Baptist Church, when these people got ready to go to the church, they noticed that they were going—They had a whole lot of White people there, just standing up with the night sticks and whatnot. But they didn't do anything. They were just standing. Many of them knew the people in the city, because Selma is a small place with approximately 25,000 people in the whole city. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: When they noticed these people, some of them they knew, they went on into the churches. Some of the White people went in the churches too. Well, we had the young people organized, because Bernard came there the latter part of 1962, but on Monday, when those people got ready to go to their jobs, working in the foundries, working in the kitchens, working on any job, they were told that, "You're fired. You don't have any job, because you attended that meeting last night, Friday night." 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: So it gave them the determination to do something about it. Then they started, and these are the have-nots. We still weren't able to depend upon the professional folk. These people said, "Well, now they think they're going to make a slave out of me. I'm going down there, and I'm going to the registration office." We had a lady to say she'd been down 10 or 15 times, and she said, "I'm going to continue to go until I become a registered voter, because when I get ready to go to heaven, I want to go a registered voter." Unfortunately, something happened, and she was in an accident coming from the road to the registration office. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: But that is the determination so many people had. Coming out of the courthouse, where I was vouching for some people, and this is after my husband passed, after the folk lost their jobs, Jim Clark was in front of the courthouse. Dr. King was across from the courthouse. He was on federal ground. And when Jim Clark told me to get in this line, I told him I was going to my office. He said, "I said get in this line." And I said, "I'm going to my office." I think I have. And he said, "Get in this line." Finally, he got behind me. I don't know whether you can see that very well or not, and I don't know whether it's in the book. And he grabbed me by the nape of my neck, pushed me down, and I didn't know what I should do. But the people, 62 of them who were in line, said, "Go on to jail. You're not going to be there by yourself. We'll be there with you." 

Tywanna Whorley: I've seen this picture. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: Yeah. They threw me in jail, gave me a prisoner's number, prisoner's fingerprints, and a mugshot. But those people soon came, and said, "We told you you would not be here by yourself." But I was charged with criminal provocation. They were charged with trespassing. Mind you, all of this is in the court. However, the determination that young people had, was certainly a Godsend, I don't think we ever would have gotten the right to vote. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: But right after I was jailed, a young man in Marion, Alabama, which is just 30 miles from us, was killed. He attended a meeting and the officers killed him. And Dr. King said, "We've got to do something about this. We are going to march to Montgomery, and see the governor, George Wallace." So on the 7th of March, 1965—By the way, I ran for the United States Congress in 1964. In 1965, we started across a bridge. And when we got across the Alabama River, because Selma is on the bluff, and the river divides Selma from Selmont, when we got through over there, we saw these people who looked like tin soldiers, but they were state troopers. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: And we were being led by Jose Williams and John Lewis. And when they said, "Don't go any farther," they stopped. And Jose Williams said, "I have something to say." And Cloud, who was the head of the state troopers, said, "No, you can't have anything to say. Charge on that man." And they came from the right, and from the left, and from in front of us, and began to beat people. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: They had tear gas, they had bayonets, cattle prods, horses, and they began to beat the people. I'm not the person to run. I'll just stand my ground anytime, rather than to run. So when they started beating people, I stood up and I saw people running. I saw blood all on the highway, just like you used that perhaps killed an animal. And I just stood there. I was hit, and I just stood there. Finally, one of the state troopers came back and hit me again at the base of my neck, and at that time, I fell unconscious. Now, I don't know what happened, only what the FBIs and the Justice Department said, and that is one of the fellas with a canister just took tear gas, and pumped it all over them. They had used tear gas before. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: And then one of them came back and said, "Get up." And I didn't pay any attention, because I was out. And he just took his foot and kicked me a few times, trying to rouse me, I guess. So one or the other said, "Oh, she's dead." The message got back on the other side of the river to Selma, and said, "Is someone dead over there? Send an ambulance." And Jim Clark said, "I'm not sending anything. If anybody is dead over there, let the buzzards eat them. I'm not sending them." And whoever was told that, said that, he said, "If you don't send an ambulance over there to pick up who that is, we are going to burn this town down." So he sent the ambulance, picked me up, took me to the church. They could not revive me. They took me to the hospital, and I was there several hours. But to this day, I still wear the scars, because the gas, the tear gas that I inhaled has put scars in my bronchial tube, has changed my voice altogether. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: But Dr. King flew in. He was supposed to have led that march. He flew in. And when he flew in, he was told what had happened. He said, "Now we have to do something about this. We can't let this go." So he called his friends, White, Black, brown, yellow, and told them that he needed them in Selma. And they came. Dignitaries, business professional, Black and White, and people of all races. He also sent a message to Lyndon Van Johnson, the president at that time. And he said that the masses of people like O'Hagan, Douglas, and the congressman and senators said, "We are going to march, and we are going to be with you." President Johnson said, "Don't march." And the people said, "Well, we came in order that we can protect you, but President Johnson said, 'Don't march. Those people will kill you, and I'm going to have to federalize the truth.'" 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: Well, he didn't federalize the truth. And Dr. King said, "Well, what we will do, we are going to march. We are going to march back to the same place where the scene took place. And if they say we can't go any farther, we won't. We won't disobey." So they did. And Cloud said, when Dr. King led the march, he said, "Don't go any farther." So the group stopped, and they knelt, prayed, sang a song, turned around, and went back to the church. Then a week, nearly about 10 days after that, the president federalized the truth, and we marched. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: And the interesting thing, things just happen, I guess, and you don't know why. I don't know why I didn't come right on back, but it was late, I guess after most of the people had gone back to Selma. Then I had some folk in my car, and I came up on a car that was against the fence, and two officers were there. Instead of bypassing them and going on, I stopped. I said, "Officer, what's happened?" I thought maybe somebody ran off of the road. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: And he said, "A woman was killed." I said, "Yes?" He said, "Somebody shot a woman in the car." And this woman was Viola Liuzzo from Detroit. And she had been to the house. She'd been to the office. You see, there was nowhere these people had to go. Consequently, they went to the house, or they went to the office, just about all of them, one time or the other. And I remember her very well, because to me, she was a very attractive woman, and a very outgoing woman, who wanted to do something. And she had one fella in the car at that time, and he jumped out and ran, and finally he made it back to Selma. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: Well, when the guy said, "Somebody was killed," I got back in my car, because there's no one else around, and I don't know how long that had been. And I drove on, turned the TV, the radio on, and found out that this woman was a woman whom I had known from the time she got into Selma. Now, later on, they found out who did it, and it was a guy who was an FBI, who was in the car with a Ku Klux Klan, and he was the one who pulled the trigger. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: So in August, the President signed the bill that all people must become registered voters. Now, it took him that long before it became law. But one thing those people can say, it was tough for them to stand in the rain, in the cold, for over a year, and could not even go in the courthouse. But they withstood all of the punishment of the weather, of the deputies, and certainly of Jim Clark. But it was worth it, because when that bill was signed, it gave everybody the opportunity to register and to vote, and it made people realize the importance of becoming a registered voter. Because we had a sign in our office saying, "A voteless people is a hopeless people." And another sign that says, "If you are not a registered voter, don't talk politics in here." 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: It was necessary to make these people realize, and I tell them even to this day when I speak, and that is very, very often, that you are not a first class citizen until you are a registered voter, and until you exercise your right as an American citizen. Because in those days, now, I happened to be a registered voter at age 21, because my husband took me there, and because I came from a family where my mother and father both were outstanding political people, and I knew the importance of becoming a registered voter. But the people in the South were told, "That's for White folks, not for Blacks." They were so brainwashed until they didn't want to register, and they would say, "What's the need? My one vote wouldn't count." 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: But I've got to write to the office, the Civil Rights Office, and find out how many people are registered, and how many political offices we are holding. At that time, you didn't have one single African American who held any political job. Now we've got around 30,000, and that isn't enough. We've got around 30,000 or 32,000 people. Because of the nonchalance of our folk, many of them have lost their positions. We don't have a governor now who is Black. There are lots of Blacks who were, who had different positions. They don't have them now. The mayors of cities, big cities, they've lost that. But we still have a large number. To think that we didn't have one in 1965, before 1965, and now we have around 32,000. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: Well, first thing, what African Americans need to do is to get some self-esteem and race pride. Now, it was almost necessary. It was necessary, and it was almost compulsory for them to have registered back there, because they were being treated like slaves. And that's what's happened in Germany, in East Germany. I happened to stay a few days in East Germany three times, before the wall came down. And those people, there was no difference whatsoever in those people and slaves. Being slaves like the Southern, like America had. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: They could work. There was no such thing as being unemployed. When African Americans were on the farm, there was no such thing as being unemployed, because everybody had to work. But in the South, you had some Uncle Toms who would go to White people and tell them everything. In East Germany, they were known as informers, and they sought favor. In fact, the Soviet Union would lean toward them in favors. Their children could go to college. But just an ordinary person, they couldn't go. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: See, the wall just came down the other day. In '90, '89 or '90. And when Russia found that it could not hold onto East Germany because their economy was crumbling, the walls came down. We got a piece of it right over there. And when the wall came down, those people were told, "Go. Just go." And they went into West Germany, they went into Poland, they went into Scandinavian countries. They went into other countries. And they're lost. They're lost now. I was over there, I got back on the 13th of last month. Those folk are walking around like zombies. They don't know how to do anything, because see, the work that they were doing, the machinery was obsolete. They worked on the farm. They don't have any farm now, and it's pitiful. 

Amelia Boynton Robinson: And I can relate so much what they're going through, and what my foreparents went through. And this is what they feel. They don't feel, they have no self-esteem. They have gone into prostitution. They're being used by shysters, and they're in bad fix. Well, this is what the system wants. And when I was over there a few weeks ago, I was over there talking about what the system, and we say United Nations, and the first thing we think of when we say the United Nations is what it is, what's supposed to be. United Nations. You got 100 and some-odd countries represent, but you've got only five or six countries that are controlling it. And back then, in 1932, the system got together and decided that, "Well, by the year 2000, we're going to have too many people in the world. We've got to destroy them." So you have not having health, good health, and this is true about the whole world. You find out that it's—You want to change that? 

Tywanna Whorley: [indistinct 00:46:02].