Amelia was born in 1911 in Savannah, GA. She started college at Savannah State University (then Georgia State College) before transferring to Tuskegee Institute, earning a degree in Home Economics. She worked as a home demonstration agent for the USDA in Selma, AL. She taught the county's rural population about subjects related to agriculture and homemaking.
Making her home and office a center for strategy session for Selma's civil rights battles, Amelia was very hands on in the civil right movement and the politics behind it. She became the first female African American to run for office in Alabama when she ran for Congress in 1964. Amelia felt that running for office would booster black voter registration, seeing that Selma was 50% black and only 300 blacks were registered to vote. She was also the first woman of any race to run for the Democratic party ticket. She received only 10% of the vote.
Amelia worked with Martin Luther King, James Bevel and other members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) demonstrating for civil and voting rights. She helped organize the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965. The first march, held on March 7, 1965, was also known as Bloody Sunday. many of the marchers were beaten by county and state police as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Amelia herself was beaten unconscious and the famous picture of her laying on the ground went global.
Even though the first 2 attempts at the march were unsuccessful, the media coverage of the third march peaked the national public opinion and contributed to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Amelia was a guest of honor as President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law.
Amelia went on to live a full life. After suffering a series of strokes, she passed away at the age of 104 in 2015.
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