Selma marked its first official Jo Ann Bland Day on Wednesday, honoring the late civil rights activist who began marching for voting rights as a child and spent the rest of her life ensuring the foot soldiers who helped change the nation were not forgotten.
The day included a city proclamation, the unveiling of a mural honoring Bland, free tours of historic civil rights sites and the presentation of the inaugural Jo Ann Bland Community Award.
Bland, a co-founder of Foot Soldiers Park, died in February. She would have turned 73 on Wednesday.
The Selma City Council approved a resolution in March establishing July 29—Bland’s birthday—as Jo Ann Bland Day.
During a ceremony at Foot Soldiers Park headquarters, Mayor Johnny Moss III read a proclamation recognizing Bland’s life and decades of devotion to Selma.
“[Ms. Bland’s] life embodied courage, resilience, humility, truth and love, and her legacy has transformed Selma into a sacred place of reflection, pilgrimage, and renewed commitment to justice,” Moss said. “I, Mayor Johnny Moss, III, do hereby proclaim July 29, 2026 as Jo Ann Blackmon Bland Day in Selma. We further commit ourselves to carrying forward her vision—and preserving our history, protecting the right to vote, and ‘Marching Ever Forward’ toward justice.”
Foot Soldiers Park co-founder and CEO Kimberly Smitherman also unveiled a mural dedicated to Bland. Artists Cbabi Bayoc and Amber Howlett Bayoc painted the mural.
The mural depicts Bland and elements of her life as an activist. Foot Soldiers Park eventually plans to install it at the site of the organization’s proposed memorial to the foot soldiers of 1965 and community hub. It will be the second mural on the future campus.
For Smitherman, the day was about more than honoring Bland’s memory.
“Jo Ann Bland Day is not just a day to say her name. It is a day to remember what she stood for and to recommit ourselves to the work she gave so much of her life to,” Smitherman said. “Foot Soldiers Park exists because we believe, as she believed, that Selma’s story still has the power to teach, to heal, to challenge, and to move people to action. Now we must carry her legacy as a community.”
Bland was born and raised in Selma and became involved in the civil rights movement as a child.
At 11, she participated in Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965, when law enforcement officers attacked voting rights marchers attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
The events in Selma and the movement that followed helped build national support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Bland spent much of her adult life ensuring that the people who participated in the struggle—particularly the ordinary men, women and children remembered as foot soldiers—remained part of the nation’s understanding of the civil rights movement.
She co-founded the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in 1989.
Bland began leading walking tours of historic Selma in 2007 for visitors from around the world, combining the movement’s history with her experience as a young foot soldier.
The tours became an important part of her effort to transform Selma’s civil rights history from something people simply remembered into something that could educate future generations and contribute to the city’s future.
Bland and Smitherman founded Foot Soldiers Park in 2021 with a broader vision of preserving Selma’s civil rights history and using it as a foundation for education, community development and economic opportunity.
That work continued Wednesday.
Foot Soldiers Park offered free community tours of historic sites where Bland marched in 1965, continuing her effort to help Selma residents—particularly young people—understand the history that unfolded in their community.
The organization also presented the first Jo Ann Bland Community Award to City Councilwoman Jannie Thomas, who has represented Ward 7 since 2016.
Foot Soldiers Park recognized Thomas for 14 years of work in the Selma community, including efforts to improve public safety, organize city cleanup programs, provide scholarships to young people and improve residents’ quality of life.
Foot Soldiers Park continues the walking tours Bland began and is working to develop a permanent campus honoring the foot soldiers of 1965 and Selma’s central role in the voting rights movement.
The organization’s work continues the mission Bland advanced for decades: preserving Selma’s history, telling the stories of those who made it and ensuring that what happened there remains meaningful to future generations.
