Joanne Bland

JoAnne Blackmon Bland, the courageous civil rights activist who was the youngest person ever jailed during a civil rights demonstration and co-founded the National Voting Rights Museum, passed away on February 19, 2026. She was 72 years old. Born on July 29, 1953, in Selma, Alabama, Bland grew up in the deeply segregated South, where she was barred from certain stores and could only visit the library and movie theater on days designated for colored patrons. The injustice of segregation struck her family personally when her mother died in a white hospital waiting for a transfusion of so-called black blood. Blands activism began at the age of eight, when her grandmother took her to a freedom and voters rights meeting presided over by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She became the youngest person to be jailed during the civil rights movement, arrested for the first time at just eight years old. By the time she was eleven, she had been arrested and documented thirteen times. On March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday, the eleven-year-old Bland was among the marchers attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma when Alabama State Troopers and local police attacked the peaceful demonstrators with clubs and tear gas. She witnessed the brutal beatings and helped protect white Northerners, including ministers and college students, who had joined the march. On March 21, 1965, she participated in the historic march from Selma to Montgomery. Bland was one of seven Black students who integrated A.G. Parrish High School in Alabama. She went on to co-found and direct the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma, dedicating her life to preserving the history of the voting rights movement and educating new generations about the sacrifices made to secure the right to vote. She remained active with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the NAACP, and the Smithsonian Institution, speaking at conferences and workshops about civil rights history. Her firsthand testimony of Bloody Sunday and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches made her an invaluable living witness to one of the most pivotal chapters in American history. Blands legacy as a lifelong freedom fighter and guardian of voting rights history ensures that the sacrifices of Selma will never be forgotten.