Jo Ann Bland, Child Activist in Civil Rights Struggle, Dies at 72

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Jo Ann Bland, Child Activist in Civil Rights Struggle, Dies at 72

At 11, she was one of the youngest at the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" voting rights march in Selma, Ala., and was injured while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

By Sam Roberts
Feb. 26, 2026


Joanne Bland in 2018 at the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Ala. "It's the screams I remember the most" Ms. Bland said, recalling the 1965 protest. "People just screaming and screaming and screaming." Andrea Morales for The New York Times

Jo Ann Bland, who participated in the 1965 Bloody Sunday" protest for voting rights in Selma, Ala., at the age of 11, making her one of the youngest foot soldiers in the civil rights movement, died on Feb. 19 at her home in Selma. She was 72. ... The cause was lung cancer, her granddaughter Jasmyn Bowie said. Ms. Bland�s sister Lynda Blackmon Lowery, who was also at the 1965 protest, at age 14, died in December at 75.

Both sisters could claim a role in one of the pivotal moments for civil rights, which unfolded in their hometown on March 7, 1965. ... That Sunday, key lieutenants of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began a peaceful march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery to demand an end to racist literacy tests and other hurdles meant to slow the process of registering Black voters.

Ms. Bland and her sister said they were among the roughly 600 protesters who attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, only to be met by state troopers armed with tear gas and billy clubs. John Lewis, a leader of the march and future congressman from Georgia, was seriously wounded. ... "It's the screams I remember the most -- people just screaming and screaming and screaming," Ms. Bland said later.

"The last thing I remember seeing on the bridge that day is this lady and this horse," she added. "I don't know if the horse ran over her, or if the officer on the horse hit her with the billy club, but I remember the sound of her head hitting that pavement -- I'll never forget it. It was too much for me. I fainted." ... Once she came to, Ms. Bland told NPR in 2022, she and her sister bolted.

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Ms. Bland, right, was embraced by a crowd crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in 2015 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march. Jessicas Rinaldi/The Boston Globe, va Getty Images

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Sam Roberts is an obituaries reporter for The Times, writing mini-biographies about the lives of remarkable people.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 27 of the New York edition with the headline: Jo Ann Bland, 72, Civil Rights Activist Who Marched in Selma When She Was 11. Order Reprints | Today�s Paper | Subscribe

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