Restoration of historic Amelia Boynton House begins after COVID, tornado delays

Restoration of the Amelia Boynton House has finally begun.  

The home was placed on the national list of Historic Places In Peril in 2008, and many attempts at preservation have fallen short, but work to save the building can be seen as you drive by the corner of Lapsley Street and Anderson Avenue.  

The restoration is being done by Los Angeles-based Gateway Educational Foundation, which owns the house. The sole purpose of the Foundation is to restore and preserve the Boynton House and turn it into a learning museum. The Foundation was awarded a $500,000 grant from the National Park Service’s African American Civil Rights Grant Program to do the work.  

Phil Brown, who heads up the organization, said the effort to get funding and get the work started has been going on for quite some time. He said they applied for the grant before but were turned down. Then about the time the grant was finally awarded, “the whole world shut down because of COVID-19,” Brown said.   

Brown said the federal government is always hard to work with, but he said they were slow to adjust their processes to accommodate the pandemic. “Going through their process with all of these workers being dispersed cost a lot of time,” delaying permits, approvals and architectural work, Brown said.   

Then when it finally came time to get a contractor, the tornado hit Selma, which made it even more difficult to get a contractor, workers and materials.   

“We have a great contractor on board who is moving in the scope of work that is approved for this phase at a rapid pace,” he said. “This grant that we got will help us preserve the house.” It will take more funding and more work to make the Boynton House the learning museum he envisions.  

The Boynton house is historically significant because the home was the center for planning for the civil rights movement in Alabama. Amelia Boynton, R.B. Hudson, Jim Brown, the Courageous Eight and leaders of the Dallas County Voters Leaguemet in the house to lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement long before other groups came to Selma. In 1964 Boynton wrote a letter to Martin Luther King Jr. urging him to come to Selma and use the city as the focal point of the SCLC’s voting rights efforts.  

So why is a man from Los Angeles interested in preserving and restoring an historic home in Selma? Because Phil Brown, head of the Gateway Educational Foundation, is the son of Jim Brown. “My dad, James Brown, better known as Jim Brown, and my stepmom, Shenese Brown, are the engine and focus behind the preservation and renovation of that home,” Brown said.   

Brown said his parents and the Boyntons were friends, and Amelia asked Jim Brown to buy her house and make it a museum. So as the torch is passed from father to son for the restoration of the Boynton house, the house will continue to pass the torch of history to future generations. 

Brown said his dad passed away Nov. 3, 2020, Election Day. He voted that day. Voting was so important to him that even on his deathbed, he made sure his vote was cast.