Joan Trumpauer Mulholland

Many of the freedom riders remained behind bars for about a month, but Mulholland had no plans and no place to go until school opened in the fall. She served her two-month sentence and additional time to work off the US$200 (equivalent to $1,814 in 2021) fine she owed. Each day in prison took three dollars off the fine.

Mulholland travels several times a year to screen her documentary and interact with students via a Q&A panel. On the February 15, 2017 episode of the American satirical show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Mulholland was interviewed by writer Ashley Nicole Black along with fellow civil rights leaders Frank Smith Jr., Nell Braxton Gibson, Luvaghn Brown, and Dorie Ladner for a segment on Black History Month.

A few days after the March on Washington, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) set off a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, just before Sunday morning service. The bomb injured 15 people and killed four children. Mulholland took a piece of glass from the explosion, glued it to black ebony wood, and fashioned a necklace out of it. She also carried a piece of the glass in her wallet for years, feeling it every time she reached for her change.

They were housed on death row for two months. "We were in a segregated cell with 17 women and 3 square feet of floor space for each of us," she recalled in 2014.

Loki Mulholland, her son, produced an award-winning documentary film entitled An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (2013). In 2017, Loki released a new documentary, The Uncomfortable Truth, from a personal perspective, investigating his family's history and role in the establishment and practice of institutional racism in America from its foundation in the 1600s.

In the PBS documentary Freedom Riders (airdate May 16, 2011), Mulholland is featured as one of 40 former college students from across the United States who embarked on a bus ride from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, on May 6–16, 2011, retracing the original route of the Freedom Riders. In her interview for Freedom Riders, she recalls the harrowing conditions at Parchman.

She married Dan Mulholland, separated in 1975, and divorced in 1980 but lived only a block away from each other in Arlington. In a December 2019 interview with The Bulletin newspaper, Dan Mulholland said: "The kids were with me all weekend, and I had one of the kids over every Wednesday, 'cause with five kids, you seldom get one-on-one time with them."

Mulholland participated in the May 28, 1963 sit-in at the Woolworth lunch counter in downtown Jackson with 13 other activists, such as fellow Tougaloo student Anne Moody, professor John Salter, and white Tougaloo chaplain Reverend Ed King. The activists were beaten, smeared with condiments, and berated. The crowd yelled at the students, screaming the phrase "communist" at them constantly. One man pointed out of the crowd to Mulholland, calling her a "white nigger".

On August 28, 1963, Mulholland attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. She rode to Washington, D.C. with Moody, the Rev. Ed King, and his wife. On their return, the group stopped in a federal park in Tennessee, where they spent the night. The next morning, Moody and Mulholland woke before the Kings and went to the bathroom where they found showers. They used showers one at a time and, having forgotten towels, used the paper towels in the bathroom to dry each other off. The women were discovered in the bathroom as two white women walked in, disturbed by Moody and Mulholland's actions. Moody and Mulholland returned to the now awake Kings, told them the story, and were quickly rushed from the park. Moody recalled seeing a group of white women come into view and watch just as the integrated car drove away.

In the summer of 1961, the historic Freedom Riders, a group of black and white activists, challenged the legally segregated buses and bus stations of the south by refusing to travel separately. Thirteen riders left on two Greyhound buses en route to New Orleans from Washington, DC.

In the spring of 1960, Mulholland participated in her first of many sit-ins. Her civil rights activism was not understood, being a white, southern woman. She was branded as mentally ill and was taken in for testing after her first arrest. Out of fear of shakedowns, Mulholland wore a skirt with a deep, ruffled hem where she would hide paper that she had crumpled until it was soft and then folded neatly. With the paper, Mulholland was able to write a diary about her experiences that still exists. In this diary, she explains what they were given to eat and how they sang almost all night long. She even mentioned the segregation in the jail cells and stated, "I think all the girls in here are gems, but I feel more in common with the Negro girls & wish I was locked in with them instead of these atheist Yankees."

After the new group of Freedom Riders were arrested for refusing to leave a bus waiting area in Jackson, Mulholland and others were put inside a paddy wagon and taken to Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi, a jail in the Delta, not far from where Emmett Till had been murdered in 1955. This prison had a reputation for violence, and several inmates had disappeared. At the time, June 1961, Mulholland was 19, and she refused to pay bail.

Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (born September 14, 1941) is an American civil rights activist who was active in the 1960s. She was one of the Freedom Riders who was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi in 1961, and was confined for two months in the Maximum Security Unit of the Mississippi State Penitentiary (known as "Parchman Farm"). The following year she was the first white student to enroll at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi and served as the local secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).