Joanne Bland

Who is Joanne Bland?

Joanne Bland is the co-founder and former director of the National Voting Rights Institute in Selma, Alabama. Bland was a highly active participant in the Civil Rights Movement from her earliest days, and was the youngest person to have been jailed during any civil rights demonstration during that period.

She began her activism in 1961, attending a freedom and voters' rights meeting presided over by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee members organized local teenagers to participate in the movement, including marching on Bloody Sunday and Turn Around Tuesday, where Bland witnessed fellow activists being shot and beaten by the police National Guard.

Bland remains active in several local and regional organizations, including SCLC, NAACP, the Sunflower Project, Ladies With A Mission, and her church, Ward Chapel in Prattville, Alabama. She has spoken at conferences and workshops for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC and in the states of Maine, Wisconsin, Vermont, Minnesota, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas, South Carolina, and throughout Alabama. She served in the United States Army and is a graduate of the College of Staten Island, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree.