By the time Joanne Bland was 11 years old, she had been arrested “at least 13 documented times,” she once wrote. In Selma, where she grew up, she became involved in the Civil Rights Movement as a child foot soldier in the 1960s, participating in the historic Selma voting rights marches, including the infamous Bloody Sunday.
She was just 11 years old when she became one of the youngest people to join the voting rights march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. Bland and her older sister Linda were present on March 7, 1965, when Alabama state troopers attacked them and other peaceful marchers as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Led by Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, the group was attacked even before leaving Selma.
Bland recounted how police chased her and the other marchers back to their church on what became known as Bloody Sunday. She wrote on the website of an organization she founded in Selma:
“I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, marching alongside more than 600 peaceful activists who ended up being brutally beaten, tear-gassed, and hit or trampled by policemen on horses with billy clubs. At one point, I saw a horse near me, and then a woman fell. I can still hear the sound of her head hitting the pavement. I must have fainted after that, because the next thing I knew I was in a car with my head in my sister’s lap, and her blood was dripping from wounds on her head. Later, she needed 26 stitches.”
Bland didn’t let the violence meted out to them affect her work as a young footsoldier. So, on March 25, 1965, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands of marchers to Montgomery, Bland was there. The Voting Rights Act was passed soon after the historic march.
Bland went on to integrate Selma’s A.G. Parrish High School as part of the first group of seven students to do so. She later left Selma to attend Staten Island College in New York and served in the U.S. Army. After returning to Selma in 1989, Bland co-founded the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute.
She then began Journeys for the Soul, a tour company that brought visitors from around the world to Selma to learn what foot soldiers went through in the struggle for racial justice
“Jo Ann Bland raised her powerful voice for equality and racial justice, and she refused to be silenced,” EJI Director Bryan Stevenson said. “She inspired countless young people with her courage and championed the power of ordinary people to do extraordinary things to advance justice.”
In 2021, Bland created Foot Soldiers Park and Education Center to ensure that Selma’s future generations do not lose track of its civil rights history.
Before her death was confirmed this week, Bland had worked with many organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP. She also co-founded the Voting Rights Museum in 1991 and served as its director until 2007.
Dedicated to educating and preserving the history of the civil rights movement, Bland’s passing has left many people in Selma and beyond heartbroken. The City of Selma itself said it “has lost one of her greatest daughters,” and called her passing “a devastating loss to our city, our state, and our nation.”
U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell said, “JoAnne dedicated her life to ensuring that the rich history of The Movement was preserved for generations to come.”
“It was Foot Soldiers like Jo Ann who put their lives and freedom on the line for the right of all Americans to vote,” Sewell, whose district includes Selma, wrote.
“As the founder of Foot Soliders Park in Selma, JoAnne dedicated her life to ensuring that the rich history of The Movement was preserved for generations to come. May she rest in peace and power,” Sewell added.
The Foot Soldier’s Park, which also reacted to Bland’s death, said she was a “woman of remarkable character whose presence touched countless lives. Her kindness, wisdom, and enduring spirit will forever remain in the hearts of all who knew her.”
A devoted mother, grandmother, mentor, and matriarch beyond her public life, Bland was born on July 29, 1953, to the late Alfred Charles Blackmon and Ludie Wright Blackmon. Bland lost her mother at a very young age, so her grandmother, the late Sylvia Johnson, raised her with her father, A.C. Blackmon.
In the 1960s, when she began her civil rights activism, she joined her grandmother at meetings of the Dallas County Voters League. Bland was only eight years old but went on to become a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a youth-led civil rights organization.
By the age of eleven, she had made history as the infamous Bloody Sunday march helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Bland was a woman of remarkable character whose presence touched countless lives,” her family said while announcing her death. “Her kindness, wisdom, and enduring spirit will forever remain in the hearts of all who knew her. She was a pillar of faith, resilience, and compassion, and her impact will continue to be felt for generations to come.”
