Amelia Boynton Quotes

Only until all human beings begin to recognize themselves as human beings will prejudice be gone forever. People ask me what race I am, but there is no such thing as race. I just answer: "I’m a member of the human race.

A voteless people is a hopeless people.

You can never know where you are going unless you know where you have been.

I was brought up by people who loved others. I love people. We had no animosity. We had no feeling that we hate anyone.

It’s important that young people know about the struggles we faced to get to the point we are today. Only then will they appreciate the hard-won freedom of blacks in this country.

Remember, this is your day and your world.

Get off of my shoulders. The foundation has been laid, now its time for you to build on it and get to work.

I can never do justice to the great feeling of amazement and encouragement I felt when, perhaps for the first time in American history, white citizens of a Southern state banded together to come to Selma and show their indignation about the injustices against the African-Americans.

Hoping to defuse the community’s anger, Black leaders in Selma planned a march. They would walk the fifty-four miles from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and to voter suppression. On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, grand dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against Black rights, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. They fractured the skull of young activist John Lewis and beat voting rights leader Amelia Boynton unconscious.

You can never know where you are going unless you know where you have been.

I wasn’t looking for notoriety [when we marched]. But if that’s what it took [to get attention], I didn’t care how many licks I got. It just made me even more determined to fight for our cause.