The Connection

Joan Mulholland says she was born in the South but she began to recognize in the 1950s about the divide between the races and wonder how she could change things. She was 9 years old at the time. She recalls “a friend and I dared each other to walk to ‘Nigger town’ down by the Coca Cola plant. Everyone all along the way disappeared and made themselves invisible when they saw these two little white girls walking along. That’s when I started to understand how they felt.” She went to church and heard all the good King James verses but something didn’t add up.

In clips from the film “An Ordinary Hero” interspersed with her commentary, Mulholland told her story of engaging in the civil rights struggle as a young girl and her journey through the March on Washington, the desegregation of Arlington lunch counters and the Freedom Riders. The film was Winner of the Audience Choice Award at the Crossroads Film Festival and the Oxford Film Festival in 2013.

Mulholland recalls in high school some colored students were invited to join her church group in Falls Church. “We all ate spaghetti together but we had to meet in secret because there was a public assembly law in Virginia that prohibited us meeting, rowdies could show up and less than 2 blocks away was the Nazi headquarters.”

Later she joined NAG and their motto was nag, nag, nag the country into submission. The Nonviolent Action Group (NAG) was a student-run campus organization at Howard University that campaigned against racial segregation and other civil rights causes in the areas of Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. during the 1960s. But she started with integration of the lunch counters in her own neighborhood in Arlington. When the lunch counter battle was over she looked around for another challenge and settled on the segregated swimming pools at Glen Echo Park. “I used to say, you can be at the back of the bus or the back of the line but you can’t be at the back of a carousel,” referring to Glen Echo’s famous Dentzel Carousel.

Then came the summer of 1961 where she left D.C. with 13 Freedom Riders on two separate buses. She remembers the buses were attacked several times but, “All hell broke loose in Alabama. We realized this was the next stage of the revolution. As the buses moved into Anniston the streets were deserted. “We thought this is not good. The crowd threw firebombs and the mothers brought their children to see the freedom riders burned alive on Mother’s Day.” In June she was arrested in Jackson, Miss. and became prisoner number 20975.

Mulholland is wearing her white Medgar Evers T-shirt and she remembers his contribution to the cause of freedom. “They” had a most wanted list and when one of us died, they Xed out our face. Medgar Evers got Xed out. I didn’t but it could have been me who died. Periodically I visit his grave and give thanks to him for what he has done and give a report to him on current affairs. It helps focus my thoughts on what happened then and what’s happening now.”

She asked the younger people in the audience: “What are you going to do? Start small; there is room for everybody in moving this country forward.” Mulholland said if she were 19 today she would be involved in some capacity in the Black Lives Matter efforts and she is concerned about the refugee issue of the Syrians and Palestinians. She recalled being invited by a group of interfaith American peace builders to join in a demonstration with picketers in Palestine a few years ago. She said she offered them bandannas in case there was tear gas, but the Americans didn’t wrap their minds around it.

“I have never been gassed but I know a wet bandana across the face is a good start.”

Her answer to a student’s question was, “I thought we were going to die at the lunch counter but being afraid is a waste of time; if you’re going to die, make it worthwhile.”

Are things better now or worse? She speculates that we have police shootings now just like we had back then. “I don’t think the numbers are better or worse, but now it gets coverage; that is progress.”