How Did Amelia Boynton Create An Effective Civil Rights Movement Leader

The year is 1965 in the torn and crushed capital of Montgomery, Alabama. At the time, every square inch in all southern cities in the United States was filled with African American segregation, discrimination, and hatred. But then, there was this one bold, powerful, and courageously beautiful African American woman who rose to the cause. Amelia Boynton, borned on August 8, 1911, in Savannah, Georgia, helped to save African Americans by protesting for voting rights. Amelia Boynton was an effective Civil Rights Movement leader because she helped organize the march from Selma to Montgomery.

Boynton’s education was strong, for she spent two years of college at Georgia State University, now known as the Savannah State University, but then transferred

At the time, her and Martin Luther King Jr. were figured largely as an activist in Selma. One day, courageous Amelia Boynton asked Mr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to promote and aware other about equal rights by homing to Selma (“Amelia Boynton”). “SCLC’s focus is to educate youth and adults in the areas of personal responsibility, leadership potential, and community service; to ensure economic justice and civil rights and to eradicate environmental classism and racism wherever it exists” (“Southern Christian Leadership Conference”) When they arrived to her home, that was where they planned the Selma to Montgomery March of March 7, 1965, the march that would forever change American

This photo drew attention around the world to the cause of equal rights, awaring others, specifically whites.

“Then they charged. They came from the right. They came from the left. One [of the troopers] shouted: ‘Run!’ I thought, ‘Why should I be running?’ Then an officer on horseback hit me across the back of the shoulders and, for a second time, on the back of the neck. I lost consciousness.” -Amelia Boynton Robinson, 2014 interview (“Amelia Boynton: Robinson”)

Since then, Amelia Boynton has been recognized worldwide. She won the Martin Luther King Jr. Medal of Freedom award in 1990 (“Amelia Boynton). She also was the guest of honor at the ceremony when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act (“Amelia Boynton Robinson”). Finally, on August 26, 2015, the Civil Rights Movement protester Amelia Boynton died of a stroke at the age of 104 (“Amelia