Joan grew up on a small farm in rural Georgia. She went from picking 200 pounds of cotton a day to volunteering for SNCC - the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. The first in her family to attend college, she was asked to leave Georgia State College for Women in Milledgeville in 1961 because she had worshipped at a black church. Thirty years later she completed her B.A. degree at West Virginia State College, a historically black institution.
 

:In December of 1961, Joan joined a group of nine white and black Freedom Riders. Their plan was to ride the train together in the Whites Only car from Atlanta to Albany, Georgia. Freedom Rides had started in 1961. The rides were sometimes dangerous. In Alabama busses were burned and people were hospitalized. Albany Georgia was one of the placed that refused to desegregate their train and bus station. Joan and eight others decided to try. There had been other attempts before but this was the first with an integrated group. SNCC secretary Norma Collins, Lenora Taitt, Jim Forman, Bernard Lee, Pier Larson – a Danish journalist, Bob Zellner, and Tom Hayden boarded the train in Atlanta headed for Albany, Georgia. Tom’s wife Casey Hayden went to - as the official observer.

Hear what Joan says about being in the Albany Jail.   MP3   Real Audio

Joan Browning worked in the south for human relations and anti-poverty programs that sought to implement the civil rights and voting rights acts and the war on poverty through the 1970s.  She and Connie were among the  organizers of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which helped the Batesville okra farmers and others. She completed her college degree in 1994. She now lives in Greenbrier County, West Virginia where she is a freelance writer and lecturer.  She remains deeply involved in issues of social and especially racial justice . She has served on the Governor’s Race Initiative, been awarded the Governor’s Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘Living the Dream’ Award and was inducted into the first class of West Virginia Civil Rights Heroes. She is serving on the West Virginia Human Rights Commission and was the Business and Professional Women of West Virginia’s first annual 'Women Mean Business’ Award winner. She works within her community on programs for education, equity, children and, youth.

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