Joan Trumpauer Mulholland was a white teenager living in Arlington, Virginia, who put herself on the front lines of the Civil Rights struggle. This is the first biography about her experiences, detailing the many events she participated in. She attended demonstrations and sit-ins including those in Arlington protesting segregated lunch counters and she was one of the Freedom Riders in 1961 who was arrested and put on death row for months at the notorious Parchman Penitentiary. She participated in local Arlington lunch counter sit-ins and was the first white person to join in the 1963 Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-ins in Jackson, Mississippi, and that same year participated in the March on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King and the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965 which contributed to the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act that year. Her willingness to stand up for justice has been an inspiration, ”Anyone can make a difference. It doesn’t matter how old or young you are. Find a problem, get some friends together, and go fix it. Remember, you don’t have to change the world . . . just change your world.” There words are as true today as they were then.
Through carefully crafted storytelling and the collage artwork of Charlotta Janssen, new readers will come to understand the struggle during the tumultuous era of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement from blacks being arrested for marching to register to vote or participating in peaceful sit-ins to the daily injustices of living in segregation. The book emphasizes the heroes who worked for positive change and equality under the law. An edition for readers 8-17 can be found here: https://arlhist.org/product/book-she-stood-for-freedom-readers-8-17-years
- Hardcover: Oversized, 40 pages, appropriate for ages 4-8 years old or new readers.
- Publisher: Shadow Mountain, 2016
We buy this book from the Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Foundation which provides micro scholarships to HBCU students, so your purchase will benefit both her foundation and the Arlington Historical Society which seeks to strengthen our community by sharing our diverse history.
