Joan Trumpauer was born into an all-white world in Arlington, Virginia, in 1941. Her mother descended from slave owners. Her father worked a government job. For the first decade of her life, segregation was simply the way things were.

Then, at age 10, a friend dared her to do something simple: walk through a predominantly Black neighborhood. Just walk through it. So she did.

What Joan saw disturbed her deeply. The discomfort in people’s eyes. The alienation. The fear—not because of anything they had done, but simply because of who they were. She went home thinking: Something is terribly wrong here.

That thought never left her. It grew into conviction, then into action.

By age 18, Joan knew what she had to do. She enrolled at Duke University but couldn’t sit in classrooms pretending everything was fine. She joined the sit-in movement, attended Presbyterian youth meetings, and watched the same people who preached about loving thy neighbor defend segregation with fury. The hypocrisy was unbearable.

After her freshman year, Joan left Duke. It wasn’t enough. She needed to do more.

In spring 1961, at 19 years old, Joan joined the Freedom Rides—a campaign to desegregate interstate travel. When a mob firebombed a Freedom Riders’ bus in Alabama on Mother’s Day, Joan didn’t hesitate. She volunteered to continue the rides.

In June 1961, she flew to New Orleans, then took a train to Jackson, Mississippi. She knew exactly what awaited her.

When Joan and the other Freedom Riders refused to leave the whites-only waiting area in Jackson, they were arrested and taken to Parchman Penitentiary—the most notorious prison in Mississippi. Death row had been cleared out just for them.

Joan was locked in a cramped cell with 17 other women. Before being imprisoned, she was stripped and subjected to a humiliating vaginal examination. “They showed they could do anything they wanted to us and probably would,” she later recalled.

She was 19 years old. She refused to pay bail. She served her full sentence—two months—plus extra time to work off the $200 fine.

When most people would have gone home to safety, Joan enrolled at Tougaloo College, a historically Black college in Jackson. She became one of the first white students—and the first white woman—to attend. Crosses were burned on campus. She received death threats. But she stayed.

At Tougaloo, Joan met Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other civil rights leaders. She became secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the first white member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.

On May 28, 1963, Joan participated in what became the most violent sit-in of the Civil Rights Movement at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson. For three hours, a mob screamed “race traitor” at her, threw food, cut her with broken glass, and burned her with cigarettes. The police stood by and watched.

Joan thought: We’re going to die. “My spirit had left my body and was hovering somewhere above, protecting me,” she remembered. But they held their ground.

The iconic photograph from that day became one of the most famous images of the movement.

Three weeks later, Medgar Evers was murdered. In spring 1964, the KKK stopped Joan’s car outside Canton, Mississippi, surrounded it, and beat the driver. They escaped—barely. Joan later learned the KKK had intended to kill her that night. When they failed, they killed three other activists three weeks later: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Joan had given Schwerner his orientation just days before.

“Because we weren’t killed,” Joan said, “our friends were.”

By age 23, Joan had participated in over 50 sit-ins, been arrested multiple times, imprisoned on death row, attacked with brass knuckles and glass, and hunted by the KKK.

And she never stopped.

Joan returned to Virginia, married, raised five sons—all named after people who overcame hardships—and worked as a teacher’s aide while continuing her activism. She participated in the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965 and the Meredith March Against Fear in 1966.

Today, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland is 83 years old. She founded the Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Foundation in 2014 to involve new generations in activism. She speaks at schools and events across the country, sharing her story and inspiring young people.

She has received the National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Award, the Simeon Booker Award for Courage, and an honorary doctorate from Tougaloo College. In 2025, a bill was introduced in Congress to award her the Congressional Gold Medal.

But Joan doesn’t do it for awards. She does it because the work isn’t finished.

“We’ve still got a mighty long way to go,” she says. “Pick the problem that bothers you the most.”

Joan’s face once appeared on a KKK wanted poster. When someone was killed, their face was X-ed out. Joan’s face was never X-ed out. Because she survived—against the odds, against the violence, against the hatred.

She survived. And she kept fighting.

“You should not waste any time on fear,” Joan says. “Fear paralyzes your brain and keeps you from thinking what you need to be doing. It doesn’t do you any good. It gets you killed.”

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland speaks from experience. She faced death more than once. And she never let fear stop her.

Because some things are worth fighting for. Even if it costs you everything.

“I want to show the younger folks that you can do something that will have an effect,” she said. “It’s just a matter of starting.”

So start. That’s what Joan would tell you. Pick the problem that bothers you most. And do something about it.

Because if a 19-year-old white girl from Virginia could stand up to the KKK, survive death row, and change history…

You can too.