She was born into a world defined by segregation.

In 1941, in Arlington, Virginia, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland grew up in a completely white environment. Segregation was not debated or questioned. It was simply the way things were.

That began to change when she was ten years old.

A friend challenged her to walk through a Black neighborhood. Just walk through it.

So she did.

What she saw unsettled her. There was fear, distance, and tension between communities. Not because of anything people had done, but because of who they were.

She returned home with a thought she could not shake.

Something is terribly wrong.

That realization stayed with her as she grew older.

At eighteen, she enrolled at Duke University. But sitting quietly in classrooms while injustice surrounded her became impossible. She joined sit ins and noticed the contradiction around her. Many people spoke about love and faith on Sundays while defending segregation the rest of the week.

Eventually, she made a decision.

She left Duke.

In 1961, at nineteen years old, Joan joined the Freedom Rides, a movement challenging segregated interstate travel across the American South.

When one of the buses was firebombed in Alabama, many riders were forced to stop.

Joan volunteered to continue.

In Jackson, Mississippi, she was arrested for refusing to leave a whites only waiting room. Authorities sent her to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

The prison had cleared out death row cells to hold the Freedom Riders.

She was nineteen years old.

She refused to post bail and chose to serve the full sentence. While imprisoned, she endured strip searches and harsh treatment meant to frighten and silence the riders.

But she did not leave the movement.

Instead, she enrolled at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, becoming the first white woman to attend the historically Black institution.

The risks were immediate. Crosses were burned on campus. She received constant death threats.

She stayed.

She worked alongside civil rights leaders such as Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1963, during a sit in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter, a mob surrounded the protesters. They shouted “race traitor,” burned her with cigarettes, and cut her with broken glass while police watched without intervening.

For a moment, she believed she might not survive.

Just weeks later, Medgar Evers was assassinated.

At another point, members of the Ku Klux Klan surrounded her car with the intention of killing her. She survived that encounter as well.

By the age of twenty three, Joan had been arrested multiple times, imprisoned, beaten, and repeatedly threatened. Yet she continued to stand with the civil rights movement.

Today, she still speaks to young people and offers a simple piece of advice.

Pick the problem that troubles you the most.

Then begin.

Because if a nineteen year old woman from Virginia could stand up to hatred and endure it, others can find the courage to stand for what they believe in too.

credit: vintage news