Mrs. Amelia Platts Boynton Robinson

The Alabama New South Coalition (ANSC) has scheduled its Fall Membership Convention for Saturday, October 1, 2011 in Montgomery, AL. Under the Convention’s theme, Keeping the Vigil on the Vote, ANSC is planning several workshops to address continuing community concerns and struggles regarding immigration, other human rights issues and the impact of voting on our daily lives.

The Convention will be held at the Maggie Street Dream Center located at 642 Maggie Street, Montgomery, AL with registration opening at 8:00 a.m. Workshops will begin at 9:30 a.m. 

Workshop #1

Youth and the Vote

Workshop #2

Immigration in Alabama

Workshop #3

The Power of the Vote

The traditional ANSC membership luncheon, scheduled for 1:00 p.m. at the Maggie Street Dream Center, will feature highlights from the lifelong contributions of Mrs. Amelia Platts Boynton Robinson, a matriarch of the Voting Rights and Human Rights Movement. 

Mrs. Boynton Robinson has been a civil rights activist for more than 90 years. She is best known as the woman at the front of the march who was gassed, beaten by law enforcement agents and left for dead at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL during the  “Bloody Sunday”  incident on March 7, 1965.

Mrs. Boynton Robinson’s untiring efforts for justice and civil rights in Alabama began long before 1965.  From the 1930’s, she and her husband Samuel Boynton, Sr., as residents of Selma, fought for voting rights and property ownership for African-Americans in the poorest rural areas of Alabama, where she worked as a home demonstration agent and he as a county agent with the United States Department of Agriculture.

She has been a registered voter in Alabama since 1932 and has voted in every local, state and national election since. In 1964 she became the first woman to run to hold office in the United States Congress, garnering 10.7 percent of the votes at a time when few African Americans were allowed to vote.

Through her affiliation with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom as well as Schiller Institute, Mrs. Boynton Robinson has toured the nation and the world, speaking on behalf of the principles of civil and human rights, a cause she has championed now for nine decades.

At the ANSC luncheon program on Saturday, Oct. 1, Mrs. Boynton Robinson will share  some of her experiences and insights on Keeping the Vigil On The Vote.

The ANSC is a statewide independent nonprofit grassroots organization  formed in 1986 dedicated to progressive ideas of freedom, justice and democracy. The organization’s specific objectives are to work toward community empowerment through economic development, rebuilding education, leadership development, and by constructively promoting political organization and progressive legislation.

The organization traditionally endorses candidates for statewide congressional, legislative, county and local offices in election years as well as working on many social, economic and community issues on a daily basis.

For more information contact Shelley Fearson at the ANSC office at 334-262-0932 or Email: statecoordinator@aol.com