Joanne Bland

During her lifetime, Ms. Joanne Bland has been both a witness and a participant in some of our nation's most consequential civil rights battles. Born and raised in Selma, Alabama, she has seen first-hand how racism and segregation created a deadly divide between people--neighbors, co-workers, classmates--and she decided early on that she would always try to lift her voice to decry injustice wherever she saw it.

In the early 1960's, she joined her grandmother at Dallas County Voters League meetings led by the great Amelia Boynton. She began her own activism, with SNCC (The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee), at the age of 8 along with other children and teens in her neighborhood. They all wanted to do their part to make the goals of the Civil Rights Movement, equal justice and equal treatment, a reality for themselves and their families.

By the time she was 11 years old, she had been arrested 13 times that are documented. She was an active participant in Bloody Sunday, marching alongside more than 600 peaceful activists only to get brutally beaten, tear-gassed and hit by policemen on horses with billy clubs. As a teenager, Ms. Bland was one of seven Black students to integrate A. G. Parish High School.

Her early involvement in the struggle against "Jim Crow", our American apartheid, has been the foundation and fuel for her lifelong civil and human rights work.

Ms. Bland served in the US Army and returned to Selma to co-found and lead the National Voting Rights Museum, lead a tour company, Journeys for the Soul, that welcomes visitors from around the world, and is the founder of Foot Soldiers Park & Education Center. As she guides groups through Selma now, on the trail of the foot soldiers of 1965, they see clearly the connections between our history and our current reality.

A much sought after speaker with a compelling personal story of civil rights activism, Ms. Bland has presented at conferences and workshops from the Smithsonian in Washington, DC and at venues in nearly every state in the nation.