A photograph immortalized the momenta black, middle-aged woman beaten unconscious by white state troopers in a 1965 civil rights march that became known as Bloody Sunday.
Now, on this Sunday in December, 103-year-old Amelia Boynton Robinson is hosting a private screening of a new movie in which her role as a civil rights matriarch immortalizes her again.
She was too frail to travel to Los Angeles for a special advance showing of “Selma” that was attended by other giants of the movement. So Paramount Pictures decided to bring the movie to her, to her home near Tuskegee University where she has lived for almost 40 years.
She’s invited about 25 family and friends to watch with her on this winter day. Some marched with her on Bloody Sunday. I feel privileged to be among the camaraderie as the afternoon gathering gets underway with chicken wings, potato salad, fried fish, corn on the cob and sodas.
Boynton Robinson wears a sky blue dress with a chunky gold chain and matching earrings. It’s a special occasion after all — a tribute to her and all that she has given.
She rolls into the living room in a wheelchair. She looks feeble, and it’s difficult for her at times to articulate and project her words. But in spirit, she is the same as she has been her entire life: strong in her convictions. Her memories, too, are intact.
“Are you excited?” one of her caregivers asks.
Boynton Robinson lets a smile slip. “Yes, I am looking forward to it,” she replies. “Very much.”
Everyone settles down on diagonal rows of metal folding chairs. The lights are dimmed and the logo for Paramount Pictures fills the television screen. Boynton Robinson sits in front, bundled in a woolen wrap and flanked by her son, Bruce, and Alabama State Sen. Hank Sanders. He is one of several people in the room who marched on Bloody Sunday.
Every time a scene depicting brutality airs, like the Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls, people gasp. When Lorraine Toussaint — the actress of “Orange Is the New Black” fame who plays Boynton Robinson — appears on screen, people clap.
“Amelia! Amelia!” they chant.
Boynton Robinson watches intently. She shows little emotion, though others around her are reaching for tissues.
Bloody Sunday
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She also went to his funeral to keep with her Christian faith, which has guided her through her life journey. Do good unto others, she believes. Forgive.
“I was brought up by people who loved others,” she says. “I love people. We had no animosity. We had no feeling that we hate anyone.”
And there was yet another factor. People are not born racists, she says. They are trained to become that way. That’s what happened to the white people she confronted in Alabama 50 years ago.
She believes she has lived so long because God intended it that way. That she is not through talking to young people and setting them on the right track. Until a few years ago, she was still standing on her feet giving speeches.
America, she says, has made great strides. She beams at the fact that a black man serves as her president and is considered the most powerful man on Earth. A framed photograph of Barack Obama hangs on her wall, as does a letter from him expressing warm wishes for her 103rd birthday.
But this nation still has a long way to go in dealing with race, she says.
She’s been keeping up with the news of the past few months — Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson, Missouri. Eric Garner’s in New York. Tamir Rice’s in Cleveland. They take her back to a time she knew before, back to Jim Crow.
She says a whole new generation has been stirred by these cases of police killings. She hopes young people will pick up the reins of a struggle her generation launched.
All her life, she has been extremely proud of her roots, a mixture of African slaves, Cherokee Indians and Europeans. But if you ask her about her race, she is apt to answer like this: “I am a member of the human race.”
She wants, more than anything, for Amerians to see each other not for the color of their skin but for the people who they are. Maybe, she tells me, it will take another 100 years before that happens.
She will turn 104 in August. She knows she will not be around to see the day she describes and hopes America’s black youth will sign up for a long haul. That there will be many more pivotal moments in black history. Many more Selmas.
Because, she says, pulling me close: “You can never know where you are going unless you know where you have been.”
