Joan Mulholland was at the Woolworth counter for the famous sit-in and in the mix at Civil Rights marches all over the south. She was just a teen in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but she was fiercely dedicated to the idea of a human family.
“The worst they could do was kill us,” said Mulholland.
And dang did they try. Mulholland was shot at, imprisoned for months, hunted by the KKK, and even rejected by her family. Despite this – which would understandably deter many – her devotion to equality only grew.
“Segregation was unfair. It was wrong, morally, religiously. As a Southerner — a white Southerner — I felt that we should do what we could to make the South better and to rid ourselves of this evil,” Mulholland told the Daily Kos. She understood that her position of privilege and power meant she was obligated to make a splash.
This dedication didn’t go unnoticed in the black community. Joan was welcomed into an all-black university and became the first white sister of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority – girls she still hangs with today.
Now well into her seventies, Joan’s a firecracker that won’t stop sparkling. She still works with the Joan Trumpauer Mullholland Foundation, an organization she created to teach youth about the civil rights movement.
Her legacy lives on in what she continues to do and the work by those she has inspired.
Mulholland taking part in a sit-in in Northern Virginia. Photo: (“An Ordinary Hero,” Dir. Loki Mulholland. Taylor Street Films, 2013)Ready to read about another badass woman from the past? Meet Dorothy Day.
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