Ferguson Again a Year Later the Protests Continue
READING
Transportation Protests: 1841 to 1992
By Julian Hipkins III and David Busch
People in the United States accept long relied on public transportation to go to jobs and appointments, get shopping, visit family and friends, and relish freedom of movement. Equally a public good paid for past taxpayer dollars, or a private visitor subsidized by public funds, local buses and trains accept been subject to the aforementioned equal access expectations equally other public goods. All residents of a community have a constitutional correct to equal protection nether the law, including the right to ride on public conveyances. Notwithstanding, the struggle for the racial desegregation of transportation has a long history, equally powerful whites claimed to command the freedom of movement of people of colour. Below are some key individuals and organizations who took a stand up against segregated transit to afford freedom of movement to all.
1841: Frederick Douglass
In 1841, Frederick Douglass and his friend James N. Buffum entered a train car reserved for white passengers in Lynn, Massachusetts. When the conductor ordered them to leave the car, they refused. Douglass' and Buffum's actions led to similar incidents on the Eastern Railroad. Widespread organizing led Congress to grant equal rights to Black citizens in public accommodations with the Civil Rights Act of 1875. However, the Supreme Courtroom overturned this victory in 1883, declaring it unconstitutional. Learn more than.
1854: Elizabeth Jennings Graham
On July 16, 1854, Elizabeth Jennings Graham, a 24-year-old schoolteacher, fatefully waited for the bus in New York City. Some buses bore big "Colored Persons Allowed" signs, while all other buses were governed by a rather capricious system of passenger choice. When Jennings opted for a bus without the "Colored Persons Allowed" sign, the usher told her to get off. When she insisted on her right to stay, he took hold of her by force to miscarry her. Learn more.
1863: Charlotte Chocolate-brown
On Apr 17, 1863, months after San Francisco'south horse-powered streetcar companies outset dispatched their streetcars (with orders to only accept white passengers), African American citizens began to directly claiming this discrimination. On April 17, 1863, Charlotte Brown, a immature African American woman from a prominent family unit, boarded a streetcar and was forced off. Adamant to assert her rights, Ms. Chocolate-brown boarded streetcars twice more than and was twice more ejected by the year's terminate. Each time she began a legal suit confronting the visitor.
In May 1863, William Bowen, an African American, was stopped from boarding a streetcar. He brought a civil suit and a criminal set on accommodate. Their legal deportment came afterward the African American community's successful campaign to remove the country's ban on court testimony by African Americans. Lifting this ban opened the legal system to challenges by African American men and women in the state.
Mary Ellen Pleasant, a longtime foe of segregation and leading supporter of John Brown, brought suit against San Francisco streetcar companies when she was ejected in 1866, and afterwards ii years of court battles the lines were desegregated. (Story courtesy of William Loren Katz.)
1868: Kate Chocolate-brown
Kate Brown was an African American Senate employee in charge of the ladies' retiring room. As described at Senate.gov: On February eight, 1868, Dark-brown pulled out her ticket and prepared to lath a train, to render to Washington from Alexandria, Virginia. As she stepped aboard, she was accosted by the rail line'south private police officer, who angrily told her she must enter the other car. "This car will practise," Dark-brown replied quietly. At that signal, as she later told a Senate investigating commission, "the policeman ran upwardly and told me I could not ride in that car. . . he said that motorcar was for ladies." Of course, Kate Brown was a lady, but she was also African American.
Non deterred, Dark-brown responded: "I bought my ticket to become to Washington in this car. . ., earlier I go out this car I volition suffer death." A violent atmospherics ensued. Reportedly, the police officers employed by the railroad physically ejected Chocolate-brown from the railroad train, throwing her onto the platform. Continue reading.
Read a more detailed business relationship in "Winning the Right to Ride: How D.C.'southward streetcars became an early battlefield for post-emancipation ceremonious rights" by Kate Masur via Slate.
1870-1871: Freedom'south Main Line: Louisville, Kentucky
On Oct 30, 1870, three men exterior the Quinn Chapel in Louisville, Kentucky, made their way toward the trolley stand at Tenth and Walnut on the Central Passenger line. When the trolley stopped, each climbed aboard the near-empty car, dropped a money in the fare box and took a seat.
It would have been a routine occurrence — iii men catching a ride home later on church on a Sunday afternoon — had the passengers been white residents of Louisville. But they were African American. And for Black city dwellers, riding a trolley was no ordinary act. It was a challenge to the entire social order. Learn more.
1884: Ida B. Wells
On May four, 1884, antilynching activist Ida B. Wells was asked past the conductor to movement from her seat in the ladies' machine to the smoking car at the front end of the train. She refused and was ordered to go off the train. Again, she refused to leave her seat that she had paid for as a customer. Wells was and then forcefully removed from the train and, when the situation ended, the other passengers — all whites — applauded. When Wells returned to Memphis, she immediately hired an chaser to sue the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Visitor. She won her case in the local circuit courts, but the railroad visitor appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, which reversed the lower courtroom'south ruling. Acquire more.
1892: The Crusader and the Comité des Citoyens
On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy bought a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railway. He took a vacant seat in a coach reserved for white passengers. This act was planned with the help of the Comité des Citoyens and the railroad company, which had opposed the law on the grounds that it would require the purchase of more rail cars. The hope was to bring a case to court that would permit African Americans to ride wherever they pleased. When Plessy was ordered to leave, he disobeyed and was thrown off the railroad train, arrested, and thrown in jail. He was charged with violating the Louisiana segregation statute of 1890. The Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that the Louisiana law did not violate the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, ushering in the legal doctrine of "separate but equal" and Jim Crow Laws. Learn more.
1904: Maggie Lena Walker
Maggie Lena Walker was an African American entrepreneur and civic leader who broke traditional gender and discriminatory laws by becoming the first woman — white or Black — to institute and become president of a banking company in the United States: the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond. In 1904, Walker was one of the organizers of a boycott that protested the Virginia Rider and Power Company's policy of segregated seating on Richmond streetcars. The boycott was so successful that the visitor went out of business organisation within the year. Learn more.
1906: Barbara Pope
Barbara E. Pope (1854–1908) was a high schoolhouse teacher, fiction author, and agile in the Niagara Movement. Co-ordinate to inquiry by Jennifer Harris, as reported in The Washington Post, Pope "boarded at Marriage Station and saw the 'colored' compartment was cramped and its seats faced astern. She took a seat in the main compartment instead. Subsequently they crossed the Potomac into Virginia, a white conductor came and said she had to move. She refused. He threatened her with arrest. She refused once more. . . . Pope was arrested and tried for 'violating the dissever car constabulary of the Land of Virginia' and fined $10 plus court costs." She appealed and filed for damages in federal court. Read more.
1937: Congressman Arthur Wergs Mitchell
On Apr 21, 1937, Illinois congressman Arthur Wergs Mitchell, was told to motion to the section of the train designated for African American passengers, in accord with the Arkansas Dissever Passenger vehicle Constabulary of 1891.
Under threat of arrest, Mitchell moved to the designated area and filed a lawsuit once he returned to Illinois.
The ICC dismissed the complaint, stating that "the discrimination and prejudice was plainly not unjust or undue." He also lost on appeal to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, which stated that "the pocket-size number of colored passengers asking for kickoff-course accommodations justified an occasional discrimination against them because of their race."
Mitchell appealed that ruling straight to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he presented oral arguments himself. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor on April 28, 1941 inMitchell v. Us et al. Withal, his political career in Chicago was over because of his having angered the white political institution. Read more at the Zinn Education Project.
1938: Ellen Harris
In Durham, North Carolina on Feb 12, 1938, a bus driver asked Ellen Harris to move to the back of the coach when a white rider got on board. She refused, but offered to get off the bus if her fare was refunded. Instead of refunding her fare, the bus driver had Ms. Harris arrested for violating segregation laws. Ms. Harris, represented past two Blackness attorneys, Caswell Jerry Gates and Edward Richard Avant, was tried and bedevilled in Recorder'south Courtroom and fined $ten.00. She appealed her instance to the Superior Court, where she received a trial by jury and was over again convicted for "unlawfully and willfully" occupying a seat. Gates and Avant immediately appealed her case to the North Carolina Supreme Courtroom, where Judge J. Carson reversed her criminal confidence. He wrote "we do not think the defendant intended to willfully violate the provisions of this act." Ellen Harris did not stop there.
One month afterward existence found innocent of the criminal charges, Ms. Harris and her attorneys filed a $15,000 civil lawsuit against Durham Public Services Company. The record shows that she settled her case with Durham Public Services for an undisclosed amount. Learn More.
1940: Pauli Murray and Adelene McBean
In tardily March 1940, Pauli Murray and Adelene McBean boarded an old bus headed for Durham, Due north Carolina. For months, Murray and McBean had discussed how they could finer challenge racial segregation. Seated in the back of the motorcoach over the wheel hub, the two immature women suffered from each bump and decided to motility to the middle of the omnibus. The driver told them to move back where they were previously seated. The two women refused, and, afterward a debate with the commuter and local police force, were arrested.
Murray and McBean hoped the NAACP would utilize their case to claiming segregation on public transportation. However, the NAACP decided non to pursue her case because the approximate threw out the about constitutionally relevant charge and weakened Murray's legal case. Larn more.
1941: Adam Clayton Powell
On March 31, 1941, Reverend Powell of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem led a cold-shoulder against 2 private Manhattan passenger vehicle lines, the 5th Artery Coach Co. and the New York Metropolis Omnibus Co. The autobus lines refused to hire any Black people except for the job of a porter. In 1939, Powell had started the Greater New York Coordinating Committee for Employment, an organization that led mass demonstrations for the employment of Black workers during the Great Depression. Powell's system, along with other Harlem groups, called for a boycott of the bus lines. Afterwards a one-calendar month boycott, the motorcoach lines agreed to hire 100 Black bus drivers and lxx maintenance workers. The agreement likewise required the bus lines to abide by an affirmative action policy that ensured that 17 percent of the autobus lines' workforce was Black. Learn more than.
1941: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya
In the spring of 1941, the Indian diplomat Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya sat down in the whites only section of a segregated train. When the train crossed into Louisiana, the ticket collector ordered her to movement. She refused. The ticket collector left, but shortly returned. He asked her where she was from, realizing that she wasn't an African American. She told him New York. "I mean which state do y'all hail from," the collector retorted. Chattopadyaya could have told the tax collector that she was a distinguished guest of the United states. In fact, but a few months before her trip, she had tea with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Instead, she told the ticket collector, "It makes no difference. I am a colored woman obviously and it is unnecessary for yous to disturb me for I have no intention of moving from here." The collector muttered, "You are an Asian," only did non make her motility. Learn more.
1944: Jackie Robinson
On July 6, 1944, U.S. Army Lieutenant Jackie Robinson, while stationed at Camp Hood near Waco, Texas, was instructed to move to a seat further back from the i where he sat next to a young man officer's light-skinned wife. Robinson refused, suggesting that the commuter tend to driving instead. Robinson was court-martialed for his refusal to move. At the court-martial trial, Robinson'due south commanding officer gave a glowing report on his character. His Regular army-appointed defense attorney pointed out inconsistencies in witnesses' accounts. The attorney also suggested that Robinson'south assertiveness was a legitimate expression of resentment given the racially hostile environment. Ultimately, the court acquitted Robinson of all charges. Learn more.
1944: Irene Morgan
On July 16, 1944, 27-year-old Irene Morgan refused to yield her seat to a white passenger on a crowded Greyhound bus in Gloucester County, Virginia. Considering the bus was bound for Baltimore, Morgan was arrested in violation of Virginia Jim Crow laws that mandated racially segregated seating on public conveyances. When the sheriff offset tried to arrest Morgan, she tore up the arrest warrant. While Morgan pleaded guilty to the charge of resisting arrest, she refused to plead guilty for violating Virginia's segregation law.
On June 3, 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Morgan's favor, hit down Virginia'southward law in Morgan v. Virginia. Larn more.
1946: Jo Ann Robinson
In response to the arrest and humiliation of Blackness women who had been arrested on buses, Jo Ann Robinson, a college English Professor at Alabama State College, helped start the Women's Political Council (WPC). Throughout the 1940s, the WPC promoted borough involvement, increased voter registration, and lobbied city officials to address racist policies.
In 1955, the WPC played a pivotal role in the launch of the Montgomery Autobus Cold-shoulder when Robinson and members of the WPC printed 35,000 leaflets on the nighttime of the arrest of Rosa Parks and helped distribute them to 42,000 Black residents over the next few days. The flyers called for a one-day boycott that was a big success and led to the decision to go along. Larn more.
1952: Sarah Louise Keys
On Aug. 1, 1952, Women's Regular army Corps Pfc. Sarah Louise Keys traveled from Fort Dix, New Jersey, to her family'southward home in Washington, North Carolina. During a finish to alter drivers, she was told to relinquish her seat to a white Marine and move to the dorsum of the bus. Keys refused to motion, whereupon the driver emptied the bus, directed the other passengers to another vehicle, and barred Keys from boarding it. When Keys asked why she shouldn't ride the bus, she was arrested and spent thirteen hours in a cell. Keys was somewhen ordered to pay a $25 fine for disorderly conduct and was released and put on a passenger vehicle to her hometown.
Her instance was brought before the Interstate Commerce Commission and wasn't settled until 1955. In Sarah Keys v. Carolina Jitney Company, the ICC favored Keys, ruling the Interstate Commerce Act forbids segregation. Learn more.
1953: Baton Rouge Bus Cold-shoulder
In tardily March 1953, the Baton Rouge City Council passed Ordinance 222, which allowed passengers to fill up the bus on a "first come, first served" ground. This allowed Black passengers to sit in the white section of buses if information technology was empty. The passenger vehicle drivers received the directive, but refused to comply. As a result of the drivers' noncompliance, the Ordinance was ruled illegal because it conflicted with the segregation laws of Louisiana. In opposition, the Black community in Baton Rouge began a coach boycott, led past Reverend T. J. Jemison. The locals developed a "free-ride" network that sustained the cold-shoulder. It was a method subsequently adopted by the Black customs in Montgomery.
To stop the Boycott, the drivers and city council agreed to a compromise. It stipulated that the 2 side front seats of buses were to be reserved for whites and the long rear seat was for African Americans. The remaining seats were to be occupied on a kickoff-come-first-served basis. The Black community agreed to the compromise and the boycott ended on June 25, 1953. Learn more.
1955: Claudette Colvin
In early on 1955, fifteen-year-sometime high school student and NAACP Youth Council member Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat. When the police came to arrest her, she told them: "Information technology'southward my constitutional right. I paid my fare." Ignoring the response, 1 officer kicked her and knocked the books out of her hand. The other officeholder took her arm and manhandled her off the bus. After she got into the team car, they handcuffed her through the window, took her to booking, and put her into an adult jail. She was held for approximately three hours until her pastor, Reverend H. H. Johnson, and mother came and bailed her out. Colvin's abort happened on March ii, 1955, nine months prior to Rosa Parks. Learn more.
1955: Aurelia Browder
On April 19, 1955, Aurelia Browder refused to give up her seat to a white person. Her refusal led to her arrest and imprisonment. Information technology besides led to the filing of a lawsuit, Browder v. Gayle. Four other Black women were too part of the case — Susie McDonald, Jeanette Reese, Claudette Colvin, and Mary Louise Smith. All had faced racial bigotry on public transportation. Aurelia was chosen as the lead plaintiff on the case. Jeanette withdrew from the lawsuit shortly after it was filed due to pressure from the white community. Learn more.
1955: Mary Louise Smith
On Oct. 21, 1955, at the age of 18, Mary Louise Smith was returning home by way of the Montgomery metropolis bus. At a end afterwards Smith had boarded and seated, a white rider boarded. There was no place for the white passenger to sit. Smith was ordered to relinquish her seat. She refused. Smith was arrested and charged with failure to obey segregation orders and given a $9 fine, which her father paid. Smith's civil rights activities did not end with her action on the bus. She, along with her sister and their children, were part of a class activity law suit for the desegregation of the Montgomery YMCA. Smith also participated in the March on Washington in 1963 and the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.
1955: Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks rode home on a common cold December evening in 1955. When the double-decker driver saw that Parks was seated in a office of the bus that an area passenger referred to as "no man'due south land" because information technology was not designated white or Black, he told her to "go far light on yourself" and allow the commuter have the seats. Parks had recognized the driver. Information technology was James F. Blake, the same operator who had mistreated her in 1943, and she decided to ignore him and looked out the window.
Parks' determination to stay put was rooted in her history every bit a radical activist working with the NAACP and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Automobile Porters. She was a long fourth dimension activist and in fact, days before, she had attended a mass meeting about the amortization of the murderers of Emmett Till.
Historian Danielle McGuire writes: "[Parks'] decision to keep her seat on Dec. one, 1955, was less a mystery than a moment." Far from being tired, Rosa Parks saw an opportunity to resist and she seized it. Rosa Parks' conclusion pushed local leaders in Montgomery to embark on a thirteen-month boycott of the Montgomery public buses that concluded with the Supreme Court ruling that segregation on buses is unconstitutional. Throughout the boycott, Parks was a fundamental organizer and helped set up up taxi services and walking groups that enabled locals to keep to go to work.
On Dec. 5, 1955 the 381-24-hour interval Montgomery Bus Boycott began. It is 1 of the well-nigh powerful stories of organizing and social alter in U.South. history. However many people still associate it with an isolated deed by Rosa Parks, without the context of Parks' own life of activism, the decades of protests of Jim Crow on public transportation beyond the country, nor the role of the Women's Political Council of Montgomery. Learn more than.
1956: Tallahassee Boycott
On May 26, 1956, Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, ii students from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), sat down in the whites-only section of a segregated bus in Tallahassee. When they refused to move, the passenger vehicle driver pulled into a local service station and called the police force. The Tallahassee police arrested both students, charging them with "placing themselves in a position to incite a riot." In response, students at FAMU organized a campus-wide boycott of the city buses that attracted the support of local customs members.
1 local community leader, Reverend C. One thousand. Steele, helped establish the Inter-Civic Council (ICC) to coordinate the boycott. Like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the organization created a carpool arrangement to provide alternative transportation for local residents and students. Even with much harassment from local police, students and the local community sustained the boycott through December 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in a example that originated from the Montgomery Omnibus Boycott. Shortly thereafter, Steele and other local leaders boarded the segregated buses and sat in seats reserved for whites without existence ordered to get out. A month later, the urban center repealed the segregated seating ordinance. Learn more.
1963: Bristol Bus Boycott
Inspired by the Montgomery Jitney Boycott, a group of W Indians in Bristol, England, organized a boycott of the Bristol Omnibus Company for its refusal to employ nonwhite workers on its buses. The Bristol Omnibus Visitor was a national company endemic by British Government since 1950. 4 young West Indian men — Roy Hackett, Owen Henry, Audley Evans, and Prince Brown — formed an action group called the West Indian Development Council and, along with youth worker Paul Stephenson, planned a coach boycott. The boycott started on April 29, 1963 and lasted for iv months until the visitor reversed its discriminatory hiring practice. On Sept. 17, Raghbir Singh, a Sikh, was the showtime person of color to be employed past the company, and a few days after ii Jamaican and two Pakistani men joined the visitor. The Boycott was also a key factor in the passing of the Race Relations Act of 1965. Learn more.
1966: SNCC Washington D.C. Bus Boycott
In 1965, D.C. Transit decided to increment bus fares from 20 cents to 25 cents. Marion Barry, who came to D.C. to set upward a local affiliate of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commission (SNCC), challenged the fare increment. He argued that the fare increment disproportionately affected people of color in the D.C. area. Barry and Edgar H. Bernstein, a quondam fellow member of the D.C. Public Service Commission, also argued that the fare increase only served to benefit D.C. Transit's return on investment and was an unnecessary increment in terms of cost. D.C. Transit, however, was non swayed by the criticism. In response, the local chapter of SNCC, along with other civil rights organizations including the Congress of Racial Equality (Core) and the Coalition of Censor, planned a i-day boycott of the D.C. charabanc organisation. On January. 24, 1966, an estimated 130,000 riders participated in the boycott, causing a loss of almost $30,000. The boycott led officials to back downward from the fare increase. Barry believed the boycott showed that "the people accept ability." Learn more.
1992: Motorcoach Riders Union
The Charabanc Riders Wedlock (BRU) was initiated in 1992 equally the Strategy Center's Transportation Policy Group and presently began organizing double-decker riders in the "Billions for Buses" campaign to face up and defeat the transit racism reflected in the policies of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). In 1994, the BRU led popular protests against a massive fare hike and obtained a temporary restraining order to cease the MTA in its tracks. The BRU then sued the MTA for violating the civil rights of transit-dependent bus riders. Larn more.
Source: https://www.civilrightsteaching.org/desegregation/transportation-protests