Browning, Joan

Joan Browning was born July 25, 1942 in Shiloh, Georgia. She is an American civil rights activist, writer, and speaker who became involved in the Civil Rights Movement as a teenager in the early 1960s. Raised on a small farm in rural Georgia, Joan was the first person in her immediate family to attend college. She has great memories and shares powerful personal memories of her early life here. At age 16, she enrolled at Georgia State College for Women, but her education was interrupted in 1961 after she attended a Black church and participated in an interracial Christian conference. She was forced to leave the college as a result. Joan moved to Atlanta, where she became involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and participated in sit-ins and demonstrations against racial segregation. On December 10, 1961, at the age of 19, she joined a Freedom Ride from Atlanta to Albany, Georgia. The Freedom Riders deliberately challenged segregation on interstate transportation by traveling in racially integrated groups. When Joan and the other riders arrived in Albany, they were arrested and jailed. She was the only white woman among the women arrested and spent several days in jail. Joan remained active with SNCC until 1965 and continued working on human-rights and anti-poverty issues. All the while, she saw the 60s unfold, witnessing highs like the Civil Rights Act and lows like Vietnam.  Decades later, she earned her bachelor’s degree from West Virginia State College, a historically Black institution. She has written extensively about the Civil Rights Movement, and she continues to speak publicly about her experiences and the importance of preserving civil-rights history. That included a zoom with Crestwood students in May 2026, as well as a follow up visit by Scott Masters to her home in West Virginia in July 2026.