Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

Mulholland at age 19, in 1961 mugshot
Born Joan Trumpauer
September 14, 1941
Nationality United States
Education Duke University. Tougaloo College
Known for Freedom Riders
Home town Arlington, Virginia

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (born September 14, 1941) is an American civil rights activist and a Freedom Rider from Arlington, Virginia.

Early life

Mulholland was born Joan Trumpauer in the Deep South and came of age during the African–American Civil Rights Movement. Her great-grandparents were slave owners in Georgia; after the United States Civil War, they became sharecroppers. Her mother was the very first in her family to marry a “Yankee.” Her family was not wealthy by any means, but could afford black help. Mulholland's mother became very ill after she was born, so a black woman raised Joan for the first three months of her life.

Her parents were racists and were very forward about their support for segregation. Mulholland recalled her mother saying, “No matter how bad things were, at least ya aren't black.” Mulholland was raised Christian, and recalled singing the children's song, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” The morality she was taught at church was in direct contrast to the segregation around her and hatred her parents espoused.[1]

Mulholland later recalled an occasion when she and her friend Mary dared each other to walk into “nigger” country, which was located on the other sides of the train tracks. Mulholland stated her eyes were opened by the experience: “No one said anything to me, but the way they shrunk back and became invisible, showed me that they believed that they weren't as good as me.” She said she vowed to herself that if she could do anything to help be a part of the civil rights movement and change the world.

Her desire for activism created a tension and divide between her and her mother. She had planned on going to a university in Ohio or Kentucky but her parents would not allow it, for fear that the schools may be integrated. Instead she applied and was accepted to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Activism

In February 1961, Mulholland participated in her first of many sit-ins. She was branded as mentally ill, and was taken in for testing after her first arrest. The movement became her home, because she was never to return to her family again. She was disowned by her own family.

She dropped out of Duke after being pressured by the dean of women to stop her activism.[2]

In the summer of 1961, Mulholland joined the historic Freedom Riders, a group of black and white activists who challenged the—illegally segregated—buses and bus stations of the south by refusing to travel separately. They rode on an Illinois Central train from New Orleans to Jackson, Mississippi, with members of Congress of Racial Equality.

Mulholland was one of 13 riders who left on two Greyhound buses and rode to the upper south. It was said that Anniston, Alabama, was the most dangerous of all towns the riders stopped at along their way. On Mother’s Day, the two buses arrived in Anniston and were set on fire. Churchgoers would watch with their children as the riders attempted to escape the flames of the bus, only to be beaten by the townspeople.

In June 1961, at the age of 19, she was arrested, and refused to pay bail. She was sent to the most dreaded prison in Mississippi: Parchman Farm. Even in prison, Mulholland would be segregated from her fellow NAG friends. They were housed on death row for two months. “We were in a segregated cell with 17 women and 3 square feet of floor space for each of us,” she recalled in 2014.[1][3][4]

Soon after Mulholland's release, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton E. Holmes became the first African American students to enroll at the University of Georgia. Mulholland thought, “Now if whites were going to riot when black students were going to white schools, what were they going to do if a white student went to a black school?” She then became the first white student to enroll in Tougaloo College in Jackson, where she met Medgar Evers. Two years later, Mulholland was the first white student accepted into Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc..[2]

She participated in the May 28, 1963 sit-in at the Woolworth lunch counter in downtown Jackson, where the activists were beaten and covered in condiments.[1]

She later worked at the Smithsonian Institution, the United States Department of Commerce and the Justice Department, before teaching English as a second language.[3]

Today, Mulholland is retired and living in Virginia. She has five sons.[4]

Legacy

On May 16, 2011, PBS aired a documentary called Freedom Riders, which featured Mulholland. Mulholland was one of the 40 former college students from across the United States who embarked on a bus ride from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans on May 6–16, 2011, retracing the original route of the Freedom Riders. In her interview for Freedom Riders, she recalls the harrowing conditions at Parchman.[3]

In 2013, her son Loki Mulholland produced a documentary film An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland.[5]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Sean Barron (April 24, 2014). "Joan Mulholland's extraordinary life". The Vindicator. Retrieved March 11, 2015.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 ""An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland" Screening and Panel Discussion". The National Press Club. March 20, 2014. Retrieved March 11, 2015.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Joan Trumpauer Mulholland". The American Experience: "Freedom Riders". Retrieved 12 June 2013.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Why We Became Freedom Riders". The Washington Post. May 17, 2007.
  5. ↑ Stanley Nelson (March 11, 2013). "Civil rights pioneer Joan Trumpauer Mulholland shows what ordinary hero can do". Clarion Ledger.

External links