Civil-rights icon Joan Trumpauer Mulholland recounts sit-ins, Freedom Rides to State Board

Civil-rights activist Joan Trumpauer Mulholland recounted decades of direct-action organizing, sit-ins and Freedom Rides in a long oral-history presentation to the State Board of Education.

Mulholland described early encounters with segregated public facilities, her participation in sit-ins and picket lines, her acceptance at Tougaloo College, and subsequent involvement in Freedom Rides and mass civil-rights demonstrations. The discussion included vivid first-person detail about arrests, being jailed in Mississippi and the overcrowded conditions at Parchman Pen. “I found out...we had to get psychiatric counseling. And I found out just, maybe 3 years ago that we'd have been expelled except the university professors said they'd go on strike if they kicked us out,” Mulholland said in recounting campus responses to activism.

Her son or colleague Lokey (Loki) Mulholland moderated, placed the events in historical context for students and said the message is that ordinary individuals can effect change. Board members thanked the presenters and discussed ways to preserve and teach this history in classrooms and civic-education programs.

Why it matters: The presentation put a first-person, multi-generational perspective on the civil-rights movement before the state education leadership as Michigan considers civic-education emphasis tied to its 250th-anniversary activities.

Next steps: Board members suggested classroom and curricular uses for the material and took a short recess to invite photographs with the presenters.