Joanne Bland remembered

photo: the Class of 2022 with Joanne Bland in front of Brown Chapel A.M.E. in Selma

It is with great sadness that we share the news that longtime activist and friend of Gordon Joanne Bland has passed away.

A lifetime resident of Selma, Alabama, Ms. Bland was introduced to the Civil Rights Movement as a child in the months before the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Alabama. She and her sister, the late Dr. Lynda Blackmon Lowery, participated in that march, and the experience began a lifetime of community activism for Ms. Bland.

Gordon got to know Joanne Bland in 2002, the first year that Gordon’s eighth grade traveled to Georgia and Alabama as part of their study of the Civil Rights Movement and the activists and advocates the movement inspired. 

After that first group toured Ms. Bland’s hometown, heard her story, and recreated the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a trip to Selma became an indispensable part of the annual eighth grade trip.

Ms. Bland’s warmth, passion, and irreverent humor endeared her to hundreds of Gordon students over the years, and she honored the Class of 2010 by traveling to East Providence and serving as their Commencement speaker.

Ms. Bland’s legacy includes the non-profit Foot Soldiers Park, as well as the Selma tour guides she inspired over the years, ensuring that her spirit and her work will continue to be felt by Gordon’s eighth graders in the years to come.

Some sample visits with Ms. Bland from Gordon's online journals: 
from the 2017 trip
from the 2019 trip
from the 2024 trip

Gordon’s Civil Rights Trip brings the school’s eighth grade to Georgia and Alabama to meet veterans of the civil rights movement, visit historical sites and memorials, and connect with activists working to make change in the present day. More on the trip at www.gordonschool.org/civilrights