Courageous civil rights activist Jo Ann Bland passed yesterday at 72. She “departed this life surrounded by love,” her family said in a statement, “leaving behind a legacy of strength, grace, and unwavering dedication to her family and community.”
Born and raised in Selma, Alabama, Jo Ann was already a seasoned activist in 1965, when at 11 years old, she became one of the youngest people to join the voting rights march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery.
“By the time I was 11 years old,” she once wrote, “I had been arrested at least 13 documented times.”
Jo Ann and her older sister Linda were there on March 7, 1965, when Alabama state troopers attacked the peaceful marchers as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams.
Ms. Bland recalled 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.
The horrific violence did not deter the young foot soldier. On March 25, 1965, when thousands of marchers led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reached Montgomery, Ms. Bland was there. The Voting Rights Act was passed soon after.
Ms. Bland went on to integrate Selma’s A.G. Parish High School along with six other students. She left Selma to attend Staten Island College in New York and served in the U.S. Army. When she returned to Selma in 1989, Ms. Bland co-founded the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute.
In 2017, she started Journeys for the Soul, a tour company that brought visitors from across the country and around the world to Selma to learn what foot soldiers endured and sacrificed in the struggle for racial justice.
Ms. Bland was an unfliching and unstoppable teacher. She spoke to student groups at our Legacy Sites and attended the dedication of the National Monument to Freedom.
“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, together with co-founder Kimberly Smitherman, Ms. Bland created Foot Soldiers Park and Education Center to preserve Selma’s civil rights history for future generations.
“My vision for preserving the hallowed ground where the Bloody Sunday march began and creating Foot Soldiers Park,” Ms. Bland wrote, “is to show every visitor, and especially every child, that they have the power to make great change in their community.”
“I am heartbroken to learn of the passing of Ms. Jo Ann Bland — a freedom fighter and daughter of Selma, Alabama,” said Rep. Terri Sewell. “It was Foot Soldiers like Jo Ann who put their lives and freedom on the line for the right of all Americans to vote.”
On the Foot Soldiers Park website, Jo Ann Bland expressed the hope that these sacred spaces in Selma would be “treasured and honored long after all of us, the original foot soldiers, have passed.”