In honor of Black History Month, all month long we will be sharing the legacies and stories of the heroes, sheroes, and events in the fight for Black suffrage on social media under the hashtag #VRABlackHistory. Follow us on Twitter (@VRAmatters) to share your own facts.
Today we honorAmelia Platts Boynton Robinson, who ” was a civil rights pioneer who championed voting rights for African Americans.” What better way to honor President’s Day then to honor Amelia Boynton? “Born when slavery and the Civil War were still in living memory, Mrs. Boynton Robinson became a voting rights activist in the 1930s and was a friend of Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and other civil rights leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. She lived long enough to attend President Obama’s State of the Union address in January [2015] and to accompany the president across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in March, [2015] commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Selma march that almost claimed her life.”