Joseph and Joyce Ellwanger :: Lifelong US Activist Couple

Trump Offers No Rest For Lifelong US Activist Couple

France 26: 2.6.2025

Milwaukee (AFP) – They've lost count of how many times they've been arrested, but even with a combined age of 180 years, American couple Joseph and Joyce Ellwanger are far from hanging up their activist boots.

The pair, who joined the US civil rights rallies in the 1960s, hope protesting will again pay off against Donald Trump, whose right-wing agenda has pushed the limits of presidential power.

"Inaction and silence do not bring about change," 92-year-old Joseph, who uses a walker, told AFP at a rally near Milwaukee in late April.

He was among a few hundred people protesting the FBI's arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, who is accused of helping an undocumented man in her court evade migration authorities.

By his side -- as always -- was Joyce, 88, carrying a sign reading "Hands Off Hannah."

. . .

Joseph took part in strategy meetings with Martin Luther King Jr -- the only white religious leader to do so -- after he became pastor of an all-Black church in Alabama at the age of 25.

He also joined King in the five-day, 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, which historians consider a pivotal moment in the US civil rights movement.

Joyce, meanwhile, was jailed for 50 days after she rallied against the US military training of soldiers from El Salvador in the 1980s. Read On

Strength for
the Struggle

Joseph Ellwanger's Memoir Gives Insight Into Civil Rights Cause

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by Annysa Johnson 5.11.2014

The Rev. Joseph Ellwanger is probably best known as a civil rights activist who marched alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and led a group of white citizens in support of black voters' rights in Selma, Ala., in 1965.

But Ellwanger's fight for justice has extended far beyond the turmoil of the 1960s. In the nearly 50 years since Selma, the now-retired Lutheran pastor and his congregations have taken up the causes of many of society's most marginalized: the poor; refugees; those addicted or imprisoned; and in more recent years, gay and lesbian people seeking full inclusion in their church.

Ellwanger recounts those journeys in a newly published memoir, "Strength for the Struggle: Insights from the Civil Rights Movement and Urban Ministry."

Q. You call this a memoir "of sorts." What do you mean by that?

A. It's not a biographical story in that it follows from birth to 2014. It's really about the learning and growing on all kinds of issues in the three congregations that I've been associated with as a pastor. It's my story, but it's much more than that. It's also the story of the congregation and its struggle to live out the Gospel and do justice in a thoughtful and authentic way.  Read On