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1. Civil rights activist Amelia Boyton Robinson was brutally beaten unconscious during the march on Selma in Alabama. She was beaten by an Alabama state trooper as she and other activists attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The images of Robinson lying unconscious in the bridge became an unforgettable image that highlighted the extreme violence civil rights activists faced during the Civil Rights Movement.

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2. Amelia Boynton Robinson was brutally beaten unconscious by an Alabama State Trooper during the infamous event known as “Bloody Sunday.” This occurred on March 7, 1965, when she and other activists attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, as part of a peaceful march for voting rights. The marchers were met with severe violence from law enforcement officers who blocked their way and attacked them with Billy clubs and tear gas.

   Boynton Robinson’s involvement and the images of her lying unconscious on the bridge became iconic, highlighting the extreme violence that activists faced and galvanizing national and international support for the civil rights movement. This pivotal event helped spur the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark legislation that aimed to eliminate the racial discrimination that African Americans faced at the polls.

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3. Amelia marched along a 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama, alongside other protesters. They protested the disenfranchisement of Blacks in Alabama. Amelia Boynton was beaten unconsciously during the march. The march gained national headlines.

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4. I must commend the photographer- for not only capturing the trooper’s “matter-of-fact” disposition that viewed the beating as part of the job, but for being so close to the troopers and putting themselves in range of state-sanctioned baton-cudgeling. Far too long, whether from the advertisements for slaves or on the headlines have people just like Amelia Boynton been made a cold statistic- a number on the newspaper upon which yellow journalism would have undoubtedly cleansed. Pictures like these, just like the doll test as used in Brown V. Board, challenged conceptions and stereotypes in the media’s status quo.

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