Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland
Mulholland at age 19, in 1961 mugshot
Born	Joan Trumpauer (1941-09-14) September 14, 1941 (age 75)
Nationality	American
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. She is known for taking part in sit-ins, being the first white to integrate Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi and to join Delta Sigma Theta sorority, joining Freedom Rides, and being held on death row in Parchman Penitentiary. She risked her relationship with her family, her education at Duke University, and her life in order to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. She was even hunted by the Ku Klux Klan during Freedom Summer. She ultimately retired after teaching English as a second language for 40 years and started the Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Foundation, dedicated to educating the youth about the Civil Rights Movement and how to become activists in their own communities.

Mulholland, born as Joan Nelson in Washington, D.C., was raised in Arlington, Virginia during the Civil Rights Movement. Her great-grandparents were slave owners in Georgia, and after the United States Civil War, they became sharecroppers. Her mother was the first in her family to marry a “Yankee". Both of her parents had good government jobs. Her family was not wealthy, 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 mother was racist and very forward about her support for segregation. Mulholland recalled her mother's saying, “No matter how bad things were, at least ya aren't black.”