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Winston-Salem
Black
Chamber of Commerce
| P.O. Box 4462 | Winston-Salem, North Carolina
27115
Phone: (336) 575-2006
| Fax: (336) 306-5702 | Email: rpender1@triad.rr.com
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TIMELINE
1917 - Irene Morgan is born.
1944 - Morgan
arrested for refusing to give up seat on Greyhound bus.
1946 - U.S. Supreme Court rules segregation on interstate buses
unconstitutional.
1947 - "Journey of Reconciliation" tests law in Virginia and other
states.
1955 - Rosa Parks sparks bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
1964 - Congresses passes Civil Rights Act.
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You've heard of Rosa
Parks. Her story is integral to the Civil Rights Movement. But, before
Rosa Parks, there was Irene Morgan.
Like Rosa Parks, Ms. Morgan defied segregation laws that required black
people to relinquish their bus seats to whites. Irene Morgan's
protest, however, occurred in Virginia in 1944 -- 11 years before Rosa
Parks's arrest sparked the pivotal bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
An ill, 27-year-old mother of two traveling to Baltimore, Maryland to
visit a doctor, Irene Morgan boarded a Greyhound
bus one fateful Sunday morning in July 1944. She sat down four
rows from the back of the bus, which initially presented little problem
for the bus driver, as Ms. Morgan's seat situated in the "colored"
section. The problems, for Irene Morgan, began when a white couple
boarded the bus. The bus driver told Morgan and her seatmate to
move farther back to accommodate the new passengers.
Ms. Morgan refused
to get up and move.
The bus driver stopped in Middlesex County and contacted the sheriff,
who secured a warrant for her arrest. Irene Morgan was subsequently
jailed for resisting arrest and violating Virginia's segregation
law. She entered a guilty plea on the first charge (she had torn
up the arrest warrant, kicked the sheriff and clawed the deputy who
tried to drag her off the bus). The fine was $100. But in response to
violating the segregation law, Ms. Morgan maintained that the law was
unjust. She was nevertheless found guilty and fined $10.
Most of us would let the matter end here (or earlier, by simply giving
up the seat in the first place), but Ms. Morgan decided to appeal her
case. Her lawyers (which included the esteemed Thurgood Marshall) took
the case all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1946, the Court ruled that Virginia's
law enforcing segregation on interstate buses placed an impermissible
and unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce. (See the
case at: Morgan v. Commonwealth of
Virginia, 328 U.S. 373 (1946);
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=328&invol=373).
Historians have often overlooked Irene Morgan's story, and you'll even
find constitutional law scholars who are unfamiliar with her court
case.
In 2000, Irene
Morgan was honored by Gloucester County during its 350th anniversary
celebration. In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the
Presidential Citizens Medal.
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 The
WSBCC is a proud
member of the National Black
Chamber of Commerce
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©
2003-2007
The Winston-Salem Black Chamber of Commerce, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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