Civil rights matriarch relates real-life Selma story

103 year old Amelia Boynton Robinson is immortalized in the new movie, "Selma", released this past weekend detailing the events that led to the attack on many protesters in December, 1965, known now as Bloody Sunday.  Boynton-Robinson attended a private screening of the movie in her home with family and friends, since she is too frail to travel to the premiere of the film.

She was middle-aged at the time and was a victim of police brutality that left her unconscious at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.  Her injuries and condition, along with others injured in clashes with police led the county sheriff to remark that the bodies should "be left for the buzzards".

Boynton Robinson fought for voters rights in the south and U.S. that eventually led to civil rights legislation like the Voting Rights Act and Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968.  She had personally persuaded MLK to focus on Selma.  The camaraderie of the early pioneers of civil rights was evident at the gathering watching the film at her home.  "I couldn't understand why they were beating us, but I was not afraid."

CNN.com story