Event seeks to release black history treasures

[Blue_Tires]

You will hear a lot about African-American history this month. From the sit-ins to bus boycotts to personalities such as the Rev. C.T. Vivian, Ralph Abernathy and, of course, the late Martin Luther King Jr.

“Save our African American Treasures: A National Collections Initiative of Discovery and Preservation” will get under way at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Auburn Avenue Research Library. The event is free and open to the public.

It isn’t likely, however, that Amelia Platt Boynton Robinson’s name will come up. And yet, decades before any of those civil rights leaders would make their mark in history, Boynton Robinson was making the rounds with her mother handing out voter registration cards, encouraging black women to vote.

In 1964, she became the first woman, black or white, to run for Congress from the state of Alabama, winning 10 percent of the vote at a time when only 5 percent of registered voters were African-American.

Then, on what became known as Bloody Sunday, she was brutally beaten and left for dead by Alabama State troopers as she and other African-Americans tried to cross the Edmond Pettus Bridge to march on Montgomery.

This weekend she will help kick into gear a daylong program called “Save our African American Treasures” aimed at helping metro Atlantans identify and preserve items from that history.

“Save our African American Treasures: A National Collections Initiative of Discovery and Preservation” will get under way at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Auburn Avenue Research Library. The event is free and open to the public.

http://www.ajc.com/lifestyle/event-seeks-to-release-290106.html