Amelia Robinson interview recording, 1994 July 12

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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.	0:00
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.	1:06
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.	2:03
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.	3:21
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.	4:08
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.	5:35
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."	6:42
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.	7:21
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."	8:30
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.	9:29
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.	10:21
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.	11:49
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.	13:13
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.	14:06
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.	15:10
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.	16:17
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.	17:32
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."	18:32
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.	19:27
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.	21:18
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.	22:20
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.	23:19
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.	23:52
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."	24:37
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.	25:25
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."	26:17
Tywanna Whorley	I've seen this picture.	27:46
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.	27:49
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.	28:33
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.	29:48
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.	30:22
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.	31:37
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.'"	33:09
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.	34:27
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.	35:18
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.	35:54
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.	36:43
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."	37:25
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."	38:59
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.	40:07
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.	41:27
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.	42:24
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.	43:14
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?	44:36
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:46:02].	46:00

Amelia Boynton Robinson	You have people living in ghettos, you have trash not being taken out, you have poor health plan, poor people in the city. You have drugs that are destroying them. You have AIDS. You have pitting one people against the other. They call it ethnic cleansing. I don't know what they call it in Africa and other places where they're giving them guns. The United States and England are heading this, all of this. Now on the 5th of September of this year, I think it's the 5th, I was saying the 20th, but someone said It's the 5th. That is the organization I worked with, Sheila Institute. These five countries, heads of countries are going to have a meeting in Cairo, Egypt, and there they will finalize their plans on what is the next step to destroy people.	0:03
Amelia Boynton Robinson	We have five plus billion people in the world. The plan is to cut them down from five plus billion people to 2.5 billion people in the world. That's why they came up with abortions. But what it's going to be, it's going to be like this. Here, my daughter is just married and her husband said, "Well, we are going to have children." Okay, I find that I'm pregnant. She finds, in fact, but she's pregnant. So she goes to the doctor. The doctor said, "Yes, you are pregnant." Now all records go to the statistical department. See, you have the doctor has to send it to the state and the state sends it to the statistic department.	1:28
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Okay. It has said that, well, we already have 2.5 billion people in the world. We don't need anymore. She will have to have an abortion. Then there is, she goes to the doctor. The doctor says, "We got to kill this baby. You can't have a baby because we got enough people in the world." Then she has to have an abortion on demand. Kill it. You know anybody else until so many die. Then we die. We are to decide who's going to have a baby. And according to this information I have, only those whom the system would like to see living. You may have ever so big good a background and you might want a child ever so much, but if the system says that they don't want you to have a child, you don't have it. That's what we are fighting against. We are fighting to try to destroy this meeting that they're going to have in Cairo.	2:36
Amelia Boynton Robinson	And you know who will be the first ones. Black people will be the first ones that they will destroy. And they'll use some of us, just like they've got people in Africa now who are fighting against each other. And in Bosnia and Croatia and those countries. They are calling it ethnic cleansing. Now what kind of ethnic cleansing? I went to Croatia and those people lived together in peace, married and intermarried. And yet, some were given guns to fight against, in fact, the Serbs. Now the Serbs were like Whites in that they lived in a Croatian and lived in Bosnia, but they were being backed up by England and by the United States. That's why we don't bother. But yet what are we going to do down there in Haiti? We are destroying those people in Haiti with the saying that this is a democratic country and Aristide was elected by the people. So was Hitler. Is that any reason why they should say Hitler, "You stay there?" No, this is the system.	3:55
Amelia Boynton Robinson	And the system also through the years has made people think that you are inferior and you're superior. Because in the south you had many, many Black people who bought their freedom. They bought it. In the north, those people were brought on slave ships also. Those Europeans were brought on slave ships and were put in factories because our people lived near the sun and could afford to withstand the sun. We were put in the south. The Whites were put in the north and they were called indentured servants. Our people were called slaves. And it was only a difference because of the fact that they didn't want White people to feel as though they're on the same level with Blacks just because of the color of their skins.	5:23
Amelia Boynton Robinson	So this is why Black people need to get some independence and to believe in themselves. Unfortunately, the system, and I say the system because you got White people who understand and will work with us. But if you find a White person who wants to help Black people, he's targeted right then. He's definitely targeted. They'll put you in jail. They'll take away your rights because you're White and you got no right working with Black folk or giving them any kind of encouragement whatsoever. So this is what we have to go through. And then another thing about Whites, and when I say Whites, I'm not talking about all White people. I'm talking about those people with the slave mentality. They are afraid of Blacks.	6:24
Amelia Boynton Robinson	They are afraid that the Spaniards, the Blacks, the people from all over the world who are not Aryans, will get together because they're in the minority now. People of color are in the majority. And I don't know, I don't believe very much what the statistics say, but I believe in this country now Colored people are in the majority. They say that the Mexicans and people of Spanish descent will soon be overpowered. They would be more in this country than the Blacks are. But I don't mind telling White people, I know whom I am. I don't need to wear any kind of mark or any kind of indication that I am an African-American. But you don't know who you are. 10,000 Black people went into the White race from 1868 to 1910, and they don't know whom they are. But I know whom I am, and I'm very proud. I'm very, very proud that I have what they want and that's color.	7:41
Tywanna Whorley	Well, I wanted to ask you about, you touched on it a little bit about being in Selma during the '30s. How was the spirit among Blacks in Selma during that time?	9:29
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Fear. The same thing that happened in Germany. They were afraid. They were brainwashed. They thought they had to do everything a White man told them to do. They wouldn't try to break any of the traditions, and this was what the White man wanted, and he kept them like that. They couldn't understand how I would come into a place and never give my name. No, they never knew what my name was until after 1965. They would call me Platts. Or when I married, they called me Boynton, but they never knew my name. Because I—well, and my husband, I don't know whether any of them knew his name because he would always say S.W. Boynton. He would never give them his name. And he was targeted. But he had told me and told other people, "Well, I don't mind dying. I'd rather die for something than die for nothing." And he did. He died for something.	9:41
Tywanna Whorley	What about the Black business owners?	11:06
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Black businesses? Business and professional Black people would run and get under the bed. They were just that afraid. However, when Dr. King came in, and you see, he came in January the 2nd in '65, and we got the right to vote in '65. When Dr. King came in, the news media came in also. You had sometimes as many people of the news media as you had a congregation. Then they were there. The preachers were not there until the news media came in and they followed Dr. King. And it was most disgusting, most disgusting when I would ask the ministers to open their churches and they wouldn't do it. There was one minister, Reverend Hunter, who opened his church back there and my husband was living. And he died. They don't give him any credit at all.	11:09
Tywanna Whorley	What church was that?	12:19
Amelia Boynton Robinson	That was the AME Zion Church. I don't know. The first name is AME Zion. I think that was the only one we had. Then the next church was when my husband died. No, before then. First Baptist, that was my church, and the only way they opened it is because I told my pastor, "If you don't let us go into this church, I'm going to tell the members not to pay your salary." And he opened the church. Then we had so many, we had older people who were marching and demonstrating. We had the younger folk and the younger people stayed at the First Baptist Church and the older ones went to Brown Chapel AME Church. So both of those churches will be in the historic walk that they're planning on having.	12:21
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. You said your parents were politically conscious at the time. How do you remember that?	13:20
Amelia Boynton Robinson	In 1921, when women were given the right to vote, my mother would take her horse and buggy and will go from house to house and take those people down to the registration office or take them to the polls. Then that was in Savannah, Georgia. Then when they left and went to Philadelphia, she became the first secretary of the first Chamber of Black Negro Chamber of Commerce. She was in the real estate business. Both of them were, but my father died. And she was very political. Very political.	13:34
Tywanna Whorley	What did she tell you? Did you ever talk about it, I mean in the house, about politics?	14:19
Amelia Boynton Robinson	No. See, I left when I was 15, nearly 16 years old. Went to school.	14:27
Tywanna Whorley	Wow.	14:30
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Well, my son finished high school at 14. He finished law school, he had his degree at 18 and finished. He had his law degree at age 21. He's now down in Selma, Alabama.	14:31
Tywanna Whorley	And when you say when you graduated at 16, you went to Tuskegee?	14:52
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Mm-hmm.	14:59
Tywanna Whorley	How was that back then?	15:00
Amelia Boynton Robinson	How was that? How was that?	15:03
Tywanna Whorley	I mean, at the age of 16, going to Tuskegee, coming to a new place?	15:05
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Oh.	15:07
Tywanna Whorley	At such a young age.	15:07
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Well, I wanted to go to Tuskegee. They didn't want me, my family didn't want me to go to Tuskegee. They just felt that, well, my mother said, "Well, I understand that women have work in the field." I said, "Well, do they have any women there?" Yes, because they had a place known as Little Women had a—that was Tandem Hall known as Little Women's Hall. I said, "Well, if the rest of them can do it, I can do it too." And yet, I had never had any association whatsoever with the farm, with the rural district. But if others could do it, I could do it too. And I just had it in me to follow in the footsteps of my mother because she was my role model. And my granddaughter tells me that I'm her role model.	15:13
Tywanna Whorley	Well, when you got to Tuskegee, do you remember the place itself, how it looked then?	16:12
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Huh?	16:28
Tywanna Whorley	As opposed to now?	16:28
Amelia Boynton Robinson	That makes a difference just here within the last 10 years. It has made some improvement. Yes, it had all of the buildings, all the buildings that they have now. I stayed in James Hall, Huntington Hall and White Hall. And the dining room was there as it is now. The academic building that burned here, not about two years ago, was there. And when I came, I was away. I don't know where I was. And when I came back and they told me that the academic building had burned, it was just like saying, do you know your best friend is dead? Because in those days, the whole of Tuskegee was like a family. And they had 3,000 some odd students. They had about as many as they have now.	16:29
Amelia Boynton Robinson	They have a little more now. But it was just like a family. And you just loved Tuskegee. You loved everybody. And if you went somewhere and you found somebody who said, "Well, I graduated from Tuskegee." There was a closeness there. Quite a closeness. But you just felt as well, I found a cousin, I found a family, a member of the family. I don't know how it is now.	17:27
Tywanna Whorley	Did you get a chance to know Dr. Carver?	17:59
Amelia Boynton Robinson	I guess that's another story. Dr. Carver was a visiting professor. See, I majored in home economics. That was a part of the agricultural department. My husband was one of his students. When we married—well, Dr. Carver, that's one thing about that house. I was telling somebody that I thought I would break the house up where I lived. But what they wanted to be is one of the historic settings. Dr. Carver spent the night in this house. Mrs. Mary Bethune spent a night.	18:05
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Just about every outstanding African-American who came to Selma, Alabama stayed at that house. And they stayed there because Black people were afraid. They were afraid of us. They were afraid of anybody who associated with us. And Dr. Carver was my son's godfather. And I think, if I'm not mistaken, they have in that book, one of the letters, or at least the check when he was born, Dr. Carver sent him $5. When he was one year old, he sent him $1. When he was two years old, he sent him $2. When he was three years old, before he was four years old, Dr. Carver passed. I think. I'm not sure that his picture is in that book. You see me sitting up here thin and I know I have that. I got the air conditioner turned below.	18:54
Amelia Boynton Robinson	It wasn't the only Tuskegee. Tuskegee was not the only school that was strict. That was the order of the day for all schools. I understand the White schools, the Black schools, all of them protected the students, particularly the female students. We were, I considered it when we were here and people would ask even after I finished and I'd be talking perhaps to some of the other students or graduates and particularly the men, and they would say, "Well, do you remember out in Greenwood?"	20:14
Amelia Boynton Robinson	And Greenwood was outside of the campus. "Do you remember such and such a thing?" I said, "Don't ask me about that. Because when we were in school, we were in jail." You could not go off of the campus unless you were chaperoned. And very seldom there would be a reason to go off of the campus. During those days, the agricultural department would furnish perhaps just about all of the vegetables, the fruit, the dairy products. Your parents would send you boxes of food.	21:12
Amelia Boynton Robinson	We had the commissary that was right on the campus. And that's now the Home Economics Building. That was a school. That was the store. And during our senior year, we went to what was known as the Practice Cottage. For 10 weeks we were sent to the Practice Cottage. There is where you just practiced what you were going to be doing on the outside when you graduated. We had, there were 10 of us that went down at one time. We had two of us would do the cleaning, two of us would do the cooking, two would do the planning, the meal planning. Two would take care of the baby. And we just did everything that we would have to do on the outside.	21:56
Amelia Boynton Robinson	And we were kept busy. I mean, you just didn't know what was happening out there. That is outside of the campus. And I imagine being sheltered as I was all of my life, there was nothing on the outside that I would be interested in. Maybe others. Maybe there were some who weren't sheltered. Because even when we were home, I think for instance, the kids across the street, on Saturday they would go to the movies. We didn't want to go because the kids in the community would come to us. And there is where we would just have a good time. We would enjoy each other. And I felt the same way when I came to Tuskegee, because the classes, we had entertainments on the campus. You could go to the entertainments. You would go to the dining room and there your boyfriend, what was an known as taking it out, he would come to see you on Friday and Saturdays and you'd sit at the table and you'd talk.	23:02
Amelia Boynton Robinson	And usually whoever was sitting at the end of the table would move over and some other place and then let your boyfriend sit there. That was enough for me. The girls, naturally, this is another day. And people weren't as forward and as sexually awakened. I don't guess they were. I know I wasn't. And there are so much to keep you busy. Like my mother used to say before we went away, before I went away, never let a guy take you off from the rest of the folk. Always be in a group. And when you are in a group, naturally there's something that is going to be said or maybe you just wouldn't have time to concentrate on the guy. You'd have other things to talk about. So when I went to school, I just carried that on.	24:18
Tywanna Whorley	Did you ever hear about any incidents in the community that got back to the campus about in terms of Blacks and Whites and having confrontations?	25:22
Amelia Boynton Robinson	No, I don't think so. I heard, this was before I got here. I heard, in fact, when I came to school, the Veterans Hospital was out there. Now, the Medical Center. I heard that Dr. Robert R. Moton had planned and was instrumental in laying the plans in getting the government hospital built. Before then, of the wars and Black people had fought in every war that we had in this country. People who fought in the wars, in the insurrection, Spanish American War, Civil War, World War I, and other little scrimmages they had, Black people fought in it. When they came back home, if they didn't have a relative, it was just too bad. Federal government would do nothing. And you had soldiers that were dying on the streets, I understand, if they didn't have somebody who would take them in.	25:30
Amelia Boynton Robinson	And it was only then after World War—I guess in 1924. After World War I was when the Veterans Hospital was built. Even World War I people had nowhere to go in the south. In the north, I imagine they went to whatever veterans Hospital they had. But when this beautiful hospital was built. And Dr. Moton had worked it so that they were going to staff it with all Blacks. That the Whites did not want that hospital to be staffed with Blacks. That the system wanted White administrators, White doctors, White nurses, and then Black nurses aides to work with the White nurses. And if there were a patient that needed the bed changed, she would call the Black nurse, change that bed where that Black man is.	26:55
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Then when Dr. Moton said, "No, it's going to be staffed with Blacks." That the Ku Klux Klan decided they were going to march on the campus. Now, whether they burned a cross, I don't know because I was not here. But they decided that they were going to march on the campus and they were just going to torture Dr. Moton. And they had the ROTC then. As I understand that ROTC and the other guys who were not members of the ROTC decided they were going to protect the campus so nothing happened. So they just figured that that was too much for African-Americans. Beautiful building like that, but no White person to be boss. That was a mentality of the Whites.	28:13
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Other than that, I didn't know anything about altercations or any trouble that they had. First thing I knew nothing about it at home. The only time I remember that we came in contact with Whites was we had a couple of White people to move in our community and the people signed the petition and got them out. I didn't know why then. But later on I heard that they were trash, White trash who came in the community and they got those White people out.	29:21
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Again, I remember two incidents that occurred when I was small. One was being on the street car. They told my mother, I was with my mother, told her to get back. And she said she wasn't going to get anywhere. Well, she got off of the streetcar. She got angry and she got off of the streetcar. I know. And I got off with her. I remember another case that we had wood, a wood stove and they put gas in the community. And my mother went down to get a gas stove and they didn't call you by your first name. That's the reason why I never used my first name because she didn't use hers. And she saw the stove and it was pretty, I thought it was so pretty. It was blue and white. I said, "Mama, get that one. Get that one."	30:00
Amelia Boynton Robinson	So she negotiated with a guy. And all the time he was saying, "Well, customer," that's what they call them, customers and madam. "Customer, you would like the stove. Customer, this stove. Thus and so, and thus and so." So as soon as she gave him a check, he said—my mother's name was Anna. He said, "Well, Annie, I'm going to send that stove right out." Mother said, 'Let me see that check. I think I must have left something off." He gave my mother the check. "Nobody ever calls me by my first name. Nobody. I am going to report you and I'm going to get your job." And she did. And he lost his job. That was at Haverty Furniture Company. He lost his job. She was just like that.	31:08
Tywanna Whorley	Really?	32:05
Amelia Boynton Robinson	She was a ball of fire. Now, when they went to Philadelphia, and I heard this just the other day, I heard this from a retired attorney. And she was saying that your mother, your mother was something. She didn't take anything off of anybody. I know that being in the real estate business, it grew when my father died. I guess more people came from the south and it's just her business just grew. And she had a lot of welfare. They didn't call them welfare then. I don't know what they called them. But anyway, I was down south and I was working in Alabama. And she had a lot of people who got their checks but wouldn't pay their rent.	32:07
Amelia Boynton Robinson	So there was one person she had to evict. When she evicted this person, I think they put a suit in against her. So she ran down and she says, "Listen." At that time she was in her 70s. "Listen, these people are having babies and you are encouraging them to have babies, and you expect me to take care of them. If you fool with me, I'll sell every one of these houses I have and sit on welfare just where I should be." They say, "Okay, Ms. Platts. Okay, okay." They let her alone. But they didn't take advantage of her, no.	33:04
Tywanna Whorley	When did you first become aware that there was, for some reason, a difference because of your color? Did your mom explain to you?	33:51
Amelia Boynton Robinson	When I started working, I started working and I was teaching in Americus, Georgia. That was the same place, I mean the same year and a couple of months before I came to Alabama. Oh, I was young. I just didn't notice anything about Colored and Whites. You superior and I'm inferior. Because we used to fight the little White kids coming up. We had to pass by their school. We were going to a new school. And I thought we had this new school where my father was a contractor. I didn't think about segregation.	33:57
Amelia Boynton Robinson	I just figured my father helped to build that school and his children were going there. But we had to pass by an older school where there were Whites and we would fight like cats and dogs. Nobody ever did anything about it. You just fight. That's all. And I was in the first grade and they would take the younger ones and say, you going, and the bigger ones would stand behind the corner and then take our books like this. And if the Whites would push us off of the sidewalk, then the others would come in and fight for us. So I just thought that was just a system. But when I started teaching, I went to the bank and I was just standing up at the window, just standing. This great big old White fella, red and big at the window.	34:49
Amelia Boynton Robinson	And I was just standing up at the window like this. It was pretty good size. My mind was either in Philadelphia or somewhere else. This guy looked at me and he said, "Don't you see me standing here? Get on back." And I looked at him and I put my hands on my hips. I said, "Who do you think I am? And who do you think you are?" And why I said this, I don't know. I said, "I'm not one of them." Now, I don't know why I said that because I had not been—it was the first check that I got. "And I'm not one of them." What did that mean? To this day, I don't know why I said it. But when I said that he drew his hand back, balled his fist up, and I just looked at him and he dropped his hand and went on about his business.	35:50
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Now, God was in the plan, and I went to the window and I transacted whatever business it was. And after that I began to wonder what in the world was that? What was wrong with that man? And when I got on the outside, I saw the president of the school. This was a Baptist school where I was teaching. And I told him about it. And he said, "Dears." He used to call everybody dear. "Dears, what did you do that for? You know that man could have killed you and going on the campus and lynched all of us." This was in Americus, Georgia. I said, "Hmm, he better not put his hands on me." And I went on back to the campus and I started thinking, because I didn't read anything about people having to bow down, and yes, sir, boss, and no, sir, boss, and all of that. I knew nothing about that kind of stuff.	36:49
Amelia Boynton Robinson	And I started thinking, what kind of folk are this? He better not put his hands on me. But I learned from then and telling the others on the campus, the other teachers about it, they began to tell me about lynchings and whatnot. But I didn't know anything about it. As I said, we were sheltered. And when I came to Tuskegee, you couldn't get off of the campus. You couldn't go anywhere you wanted to go. That's all right with me. I've got enough to entertain me right in the dormitory. But the students were really, the women particularly were very, very sheltered here on the campus. Oh, they had some of them that sneak out. And I didn't know it until I finished. And some of them told me about it. I know during our, just before graduation, we had a girl who was pregnant. That it was time to grad—just a few days before graduation. They shipped her off, sent her home.	37:51
Tywanna Whorley	Well, if you did go off campus, was there a Black section in Tuskegee, like businesses that you could go?	38:59
Amelia Boynton Robinson	They would take us downtown to the stores.	39:08
Tywanna Whorley	The downtown, the segregated ones?	39:10
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Yes, I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was. Didn't pay any attention to it.	39:10
Tywanna Whorley	But there was no Black business? People that owned? [indistinct 00:39:26].	39:10
Amelia Boynton Robinson	I don't think so. I think all of it—see, everything was Black in the community. You had the stores, like the stores right off the campus now.	39:27
Tywanna Whorley	Okay.	39:35
Amelia Boynton Robinson	You could get anything you wanted. You had to the drug store. You didn't have to eat off of the campus. You had the grocery store on the campus and off the campus. Most of the kids, I'm sure was like I was. And that is their parents supplied them as whatever they needed. Clothing, with money. And they didn't need that much money, things like that. But I enjoyed being sheltered because I was used to being sheltered.	39:36
Tywanna Whorley	Well, did your mom ever talk to you about, I mean, did you ever talk to your mom about your experience?	40:12
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Experience here?	40:21
Tywanna Whorley	I mean, yeah, having that experience when you went to teach too and going to the bank?	40:23
Amelia Boynton Robinson	No, I don't think I ever talked to her about that. No. No, I never did tell her. But one thing about it, she always told me, now I'm the only one in the south. All of the rest, everybody's in the north. And here I am down here in Alabama, when nobody had ever lived in Alabama. In '36, I think it was '36 in North Alabama, there were some Black boys. At that time, Black men or boys would—we call them hobos. They would catch the train, in the car boxes or box cars. And they would sometimes, I understand a lot of them say they would ride for the fun of it. They'd have money in their pockets, but instead of paying their fair, they'd just go and catch a train.	40:28
Amelia Boynton Robinson	What do you call those people? And so I said, we call them hobos. But I think there was another name. So these nine boys got in these box cars. And they found some women, some White women, and they were arrested and put in jail. Well, it got back home to my mother. My mother said, "Leave that Godforsaken place. People will lynch you. Come on back up here." Well, I never liked Philadelphia. When they moved, I didn't like it. "You come on up here where your family is. Don't you stay down there."	41:46
Amelia Boynton Robinson	But of course, that didn't mean a thing to me because I was grown and it was time for me to think about myself. So then she said, "You know what? I keep you on the altar in front of God. Every day I pray for you. I pray that nothing will ever happen." And I'm sure she did because I would go after the crackers. Oh, I'd boiled them out. And I never had any repercussion. So I think her keeping me in front of God all the time had a whole lot to do with it. And I told my son that. And my granddaughter, who's now in college. I feel as though if you don't have a religious background or if you don't have somebody who believes that you don't have to be killed to be anything happening to you. If you have somebody who believes, in fact, every person themselves should believe in God. But I have had no trouble whatsoever.	42:35
Tywanna Whorley	What did you remember about the nine?	44:04
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Hm?	44:04
Tywanna Whorley	What do you remember about the case or about this [indistinct 00:44:10]?	44:06
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Some of them died in prison. I believe they stayed there 15 or 20 years.	44:12
Tywanna Whorley	Did people talk about it in Selma?	44:18
Amelia Boynton Robinson	I'm sure they did. My husband and I would discuss it. But I'm sure. I don't know whether they did or not. They might have been afraid to do it. They might be afraid to open their minds. Because they believe that White folk were right. They might have said they didn't have any right on that train. They know that's White folks place. I don't know. I don't know.	44:23
Tywanna Whorley	Did you think at the time that they were going to be lynched or convicted?	44:48
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Oh, I guess so. Because you see when in working down in Selma, I ran into all kinds of things. People had all kinds of weird tales about what happened. Lots of people believed in us and they would come to the office and talk about how badly they were treated. So I would not have been surprised regardless of what happened. For instance, when I first went to Selma, they had a guy who was a sheriff.	44:58
Amelia Boynton Robinson	And every time he'd kill a Black person, he would put a notch in his gun. But nothing was done about it. And see, our office was right across from the City Hall and the jail was on the top floor of the City Hall. Often we would hear people screaming and hollering where they beat them half to death. And I know whenever anything would happen, they'd come right on across and tell us about it. So there were lots and lots of atrocities. That's the reason they tried to get rid of us, because-	45:37

Amelia Boynton Robinson	Go to make things, do a little crocheting, any little thing that we could do. And I imagine those things went to the Red Cross to give away. I just imagine.	0:02
Tywanna Whorley	Do you remember when you started being active in NAACP as you got older?	0:19
Amelia Boynton Robinson	After I came to Selma, my husband was a president and we had a state or national meeting, maybe state NAACP meeting. We had monthly meetings. And really, if it had not been for the NAACP, we wouldn't have had people to bond us out. When we went to jail, NAACP stood beside us and bond out so many people.	0:28
Tywanna Whorley	What did you think was going to happen when you found out that the state was trying to outlaw the NAACP?	1:05
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Was trying to do what?	1:13
Tywanna Whorley	Outlaw.	1:13
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Outlaw.	1:13
Tywanna Whorley	Outlaw NAACP.	1:13
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Well, one thing about it, when they outlawed the NAACP, they had to outlaw all of the rest of the organizations like the White Citizens Council, KKK, the White—What do they call? White is Right. All of those organizations had to be outlawed too.	1:17
Tywanna Whorley	Well, I didn't know that.	1:45
Amelia Boynton Robinson	Yeah.	1:46
Tywanna Whorley	So [indistinct 00:01:50] they were trying to get rid of the organization.	1:49
Amelia Boynton Robinson	That's right.	1:54
Tywanna Whorley	Was there an alternative organization in Selma set up?	1:56
Amelia Boynton Robinson	We didn't stop working under SCLC. We never stopped.	2:02
Tywanna Whorley	Okay. All right. Well, let you—	2:12

Item Info

Title:

Amelia Robinson interview recording, 1994 July 12

Date:

July 12, 1994

Creator:

Robinson, Amelia Boynton

Contributor:

Whorley, Tywanna

Description:

Name: Amelia Boynton Robinson; Date of Birth: 1917-10-13; Place of Birth: unknown; Occupation(s): unknown; Residence: Tuskegee, AL
Informant ID: 687; Interviewed by: Tywanna Whorley

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-2004

Series:

Related Resources:

See below

Provenance:

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

Identifier:

RL00170-CS-1620
RL00170-CS-1621
9b6dda92-9411-4e5b-a8ab-b2b82f7c467e
behindtheveil
fe9b9656-ccdd-43f1-8a20-20e2e8699667
ark:/87924/r4jh3rc0c
fe9b9656-ccdd-43f1-8a20-20e2e8699667

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4jh3rc0c

Sponsor:

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Amelia Robinson interview recording, 1994 July 12

Transcript

Item Info

1. Amelia Robinson administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Amelia Robinson interview recording, 1994 July 12

Transcript

Item Info

Related Items

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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