Most people learn all about Rosa Parks in school; the black woman who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus in 1955 and started a civil rights movement that would change the way our country looked at race. But did you know she wasn’t the first woman to stand up (or stay seated) for her beliefs on a bus? I want you to know all about two other incredible women that history should remember.
Irene Amos Morgan Kirkaldy (1917-2007)
Eleven years before Ms. Park’s act of civil disobedience, there was Irene Morgan.
Irene was raised in Baltimore, Maryland, along with her eight siblings. As a result of the Great Depression, she dropped out of high school and began working at B-26 Marauders at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company, where she met her first husband, Sherwood Morgan. The two would have two children together, however it was a devastating miscarriage that would put her on the path of historical significance.
Recovering from her miscarriage, Irene went to stay with her mother in Gloucester, Virginia, for a short time. After her visit, to return to Baltimore, she boarded a Greyhound bus and dutifully chose a seat in the back that was designated for black passengers. About a half hour into her journey home, the driver asked Irene and another passenger, a young black woman with a small child, to give up their seats to a white couple who had just boarded the crowded bus. Although she hadn’t woken up that morning with the conscious decision to choose martyrdom, Irene refused and remained seated, prompting the bus driver to drive directly to the police station and demand her arrest. When the sheriff boarded and gave Irene the arrest warrant, this pioneer chose violence and tore it up in front of him. She didn’t stop there! “He put his hand on me to arrest me, so I took my foot and kicked him,” she recalled in “You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow!” a 1995 public television documentary. “He was blue and purple and turned all colors. I started to bite him, but he looked dirty, so I couldn’t bite him. So all I could do was claw and tear his clothes.”
Irene was arrested in Saluda, Virginia, and charged with resisting arrest and violating Virginia’s Jim Crow transit laws. While she readily admitted guilt for resisting arrest and paid her $100 fine, she refused to plead guilty to violating “Jim Crow laws” which carried a $10 fine. Instead, she appealed to the NAACP and offered herself as a test case to challenge segregated interstate transport. The highest court in Virginia ruled against her but Irene and the NAACP were determined in their cause and appealed to the US Supreme Court. On June 3, 1946, the justices handed down their ruling in Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, agreeing that segregation violated the Constitution’s protection of interstate commerce. The ruling was a huge legal blow to Jim Crow and segregation even though most southern states simply refused to enforce the ruling.
Irene and her family moved to New York City where she was widowed and then remarried, to Stanley Kirkaldy. She continued to inspire those around her by obtaining her bachelor’s degree in communications at age 68 and her master’s degree in urban studies at 72. In 2000, the city of Gloucester, Virginia, where she started her fight, honored her during their 350th anniversary. In 2001, she received the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second highest civilian honor in the US, from President Bill Clinton.
Although she passed in 2007, she was posthumously inducted into the Maryland Women’s Hall of Fame in 2010. The honor was well deserved as her courageous, “not-today-Satan” attitude spoke to many and helped propel the Civil Rights Movement.
Claudette Colvin (1939-)
I suppose there is no way to know if Claudette Colvin was inspired by Irene Morgan Kirkaldy; at the time Irene’s fight began Claudette was only 4 years old. But, just a few years later and 9 months before Ms. Park’s infamous refusal, Claudette also refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus.
In several interviews, Claudette recalls learning black history in her segregated school and talking about the injustices blacks were experiencing daily under the Jim Crow segregation laws. That may be why the 15 year old Claudette chose to remain seated on March 22, 1955 when asked to give up her seat in the designated black section of the crowded bus to a white woman. In 2009, Claudette told Eliza Gray of Newsweek, “I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, ‘Sit down girl!’” As a result of her refusal, Claudette was forcibly removed from the bus by a police officer shouting, “It’s my constitutional right”. Regardless of the protection she was due according to the 14th amendment of the US Constitution, Claudette was convicted for violating Montgomery’s segregation laws and assaulting an officer.
Although many today don’t know about Claudette, this act of protest by a 15 year old girl in 1955 did not go entirely unnoticed! After Rosa Park’s own act of civil disobedience, civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, descended on Montgomery to meet with city and bus officials. The movement made the decision that Ms. Parks was a more suitable representative of their fight. Claudette recalled in her 2009 interview with the New York Times, “My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. She told me: ‘Let Rosa be the one. White people aren’t going to bother Rosa — her skin is lighter than yours and they like her.’” She went on to tell the reporter that she’d long ago gotten over any hurt feelings, saying “I know in my heart that she was the right person.”
Ceding the limelight to Rosa Parks wasn’t the last for Claudette Colvin. With her passion lit and her mission clear, she continued to take a stand against discriminatory laws of the Jim Crow era. She served as a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle in 1956, a lawsuit that challenged Alabama statutes and Montgomery city laws requiring segregation on buses and eventually put an end to discriminatory practice on buses in Alabama.
Most recently she filed a petition to have her juvenile arrest record expunged, hoping to see justice served. The New York Times quoted her as saying, “I’m not doing it for me, I’m 82 years old. But I wanted my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren to understand that their grandmother stood up for something very important, and that it changed our lives a lot, changed attitudes.” The judge granted the request and destroyed the records in December 2021, stating that Colvin's refusal in 1955 had "been recognized as a courageous act on her behalf and on behalf of a community of affected people".
I couldn’t agree more, Ms. Colvin; your bravery is an inspiration to all of us!
If you want to learn more about Irene Morgan Kirkaldy or Claudette Colvin, a simple internet search will do. However, here are a few sites and articles I really liked:
Kirkaldy
Colvin
Comments