Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia
December 2007
Q: Weren't there Black people who refused to give up their bus seats years before Rosa Parks did?
-- Jill Cavanaugh, Chicago, Illinois
A: Rosa Parks' place in the pantheon of civil rights leaders is
justified by her courageous defiance of a segregation law and her lifetime of
civil rights activism. Yes, you are correct: she was not the first African
American to disobey the segregation laws regulating bus travel. Eleven years
before Parks refused to give her seat to a White man, a Black woman in Virginia refused to give her seat to a White couple and her action led to a landmark
Supreme Court decision.
On July 16, 1944, Irene Morgan (later Kirkaldy)[1]
boarded a Greyhound bus in Gloucester County, Virginia, where she had been
recuperating at her mother's home following a miscarriage. The twenty-seven
year old mother of two had a doctor's appointment in Baltimore, Maryland, a five-hour ride from the Gloucester County bus station. She sat in the "Colored
Section," several rows from the back of the bus. The bus was crowded. When a young
white couple boarded and needed seats, the White driver told Morgan and the
African American woman[2]
seated next to her to surrender their seats and move farther back. Irene Morgan
refused. "I was shocked at first and then slowly realized he was
serious," she wrote years later.[3]
The driver, angered by Morgan's refusal to obey him, drove the bus to the Middlesex County town of Saluda and stopped outside the jail. A sheriff's deputy came aboard and told Morgan that he had a warrant for her arrest.
Unlike Rosa Parks, Irene Morgan had not been trained to accept the tenets of
nonviolent civil disobedience. When she was handed the arrest warrant she tore
it and tossed it out the bus window. One of the officers swore at her and
tried to grab her arm to physically remove her from the bus. According to
Morgan:
"He touched me. That's when I kicked him in a very bad place. He hobbled
off, and another one came on. He was trying to put his hands on me to get me
off. I was going to bite him, but he was dirty, so I clawed him instead. I
ripped his shirt. We were both pulling at each other. He said he'd use his
nightstick. I said, "We'll whip each other."[4]
After being subdued, she was dragged off the bus, and locked in the
Middlesex County jail. Morgan shouted through
the bars to ask someone to tell the local minister to call her mother. She
was jailed for resisting arrest and violating Virginia's segregation law. When her mother arrived, she had to post a hefty
$500 bail.In court, Morgan pleaded guilty to the first charge
(resisting arrest) and paid a $100 fine. She pleaded not guilty to the second
charge (violating Virginia's segregation law), but was convicted and fined $10,
which she refused to pay.
At her trial in Middlesex Circuit Court, Spottswood
Robinson III, her attorney, argued that segregation laws unfairly impeded
interstate commerce. Robinson made a strategic decision not to argue that the
laws were unfair under the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection because
racial segregation, while unjust, was the law of the land. The strategy did
not work at the local court but it would pay dividends later. The National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), looking for a test
case regarding segregation on interstate travel, became involved and supplied
Morgan with a legal team led by Thurgood Marshall and William Hastie. Her
arrest and $10 fine were appealed all the way to the United States Supreme
Court by the NAACP's lawyers. On June 3, 1946, in Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth
of Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in interstate travel
was unconstitutional as "an undue burden on commerce." The High
Court said,
"As no state law can
reach beyond its own border nor bar transportation of passengers across its
boundaries, diverse seating requirements for the races in interstate journeys
result. As there is no federal act dealing with the separation of races in
interstate transportation, we must decide the validity of this Virginia statute
on the challenge that it interferes with commerce, as a matter of balance
between the exercise of the local police power and the need for national
uniformity in the regulations for interstate travel. It seems clear to us that
seating arrangements for the different races in interstate motor travel require
a single, uniform rule to promote and protect national travel. Consequently, we
hold the Virginia statute in controversy invalid."[5]
Justice Stanley F. Reed wrote "Seating arrangements
for the different races in interstate motor travel require a single uniform
rule to promote and protect national travel."[6] Stated differently, forcing passengers to change seats or sections
every time they crossed state lines was unconstitutional. The court did not rule that segregated transportation within
the state was unconstitutional. Although this Supreme
Court decision did not attack the real motive behind Jim Crow laws and
policies-namely the intent to maintain White supremacy-it did signal that the
High Court was willing to rule (in this case indirectly) against the "Southern
Way."
It is not surprising that those parts
of the United States, primarily but not exclusively the South, where
segregation was codified in law or practiced as custom ignored Irene
Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia. The Supreme Court did
not tell them what to do or not to do. States rights, it was argued,
superseded anything coming from "High Government." And, in some cases, it
could be argued that "city rights," "town rights," even "neighborhood rights"
superseded Supreme Court rulings. A year after the Irene Morgan
decision, an interracial group, led by Bayard Rustin and other members of the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), staged bus rides through the Upper South to
test compliance to the Supreme Court decision. During the rides, the young "freedom riders" paid tribute
to Morgan in a song which concluded: "Get on the bus, sit anyplace, 'Cause
Irene Morgan won her case. You don't have to ride Jim Crow." According to Rustin:
"Therefore the combination of these blacks who were
already resisting, and the Irene Morgan Decision, which gave blacks the right
to resist segregation, particularly in interstate travel, we in CORE decided
immediately following the Morgan decision that the next year, 1947, we were
going to create a nationwide protest with nine blacks and nine whites who would
go into buses all over the upper south with blacks sitting in the front and the
whites sitting in the back to challenge this. This was known generally as the
first Freedom Ride. It was called 'The Journey of Reconciliation.' As a result
of the Journey of Reconciliation a number of black and whites were jailed. That
was my first experience on a chain gang. In late 1947, early 1948 I spent
thirty days on a chain gang, as well as did a number of whites and other
blacks.
By CORE's moving through the southern states getting five blacks arrested
here, five whites arrested there, an interracial couple being arrested here,
and willingness to go to jail and write about it, and the fact that the NAACP
picked up those experiences and made booklets as to how to adhere to the Irene
Morgan Decision and said, 'We will give you an attorney anywhere you go and you
are willing to face arrest to clarify this issue,' that period of eight years
of continuously doing this all over the south prepared for the 1960s
revolution, prepared for the 1954 Supreme Court Decision."[7]
In 1961, Freedom Riders rode buses
through the South to protest segregation and were met with a level of violence
in Alabama that stunned the nation, revealing the deep hatred that many
southern Whites had for Blacks. The Freedom Riders were beaten, kicked,
punched, hit with clubs, had their bus bombed, and found themselves
incarcerated in local jails where they rightly feared that they could be killed
by proponents of White supremacy. But their willingness to suffer helped draw
attention to the racial caste system that operated in the 1960s. Truth be
told, there may have never been freedom rides had Irene Morgan obeyed the bus
driver's command to give up her seat.
Irene Morgan lived in relative
obscurity until recently. In 1995 she appeared in a public television
documentary about her case called, You Don't Have To Ride Jim Crow. That
appearance introduced her story to a new generation. In 2001, Gloucester, Virginia, honored her during the town's 350th anniversary
celebration. That same year President William Jefferson Clinton recognized her
with the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second highest civilian honor that a
President can bestow. She was a remarkable woman-she obtained her
bachelor's degree from St. John's University at age 68 and her master's from
Queen's College at 73 years of age. She spent much of her life involved in
civic and community uplift efforts, especially feeding and clothing homeless
people. She never asked for nor sought public recognition.
Mrs. Irene Morgan Kirkaldy died on August 10, 2007
at the age of 90. Rest in peace, Sister.
[1]
It was before the death of her first husband and subsequent remarriage, and her
name was Irene Morgan. It would later be Irene Morgan Kirkaldy.
[2]
The woman sitting next to Morgan was holding a young baby. Not only did Morgan
refuse to obey the bus driver but she encouraged the woman next to her to not
give up her seat.
[5] Richard
Wormser, Morgan V. Virginia 1946, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_morgan.html
(November 24, 2007). See also, Frost Illustrated, The Original Freedom
Rider Irene Morgan Kirkaldy Dies, http://www.frostillustrated.com/atf.php?sid=1942
(November 22, 2007). See, also, Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, http://law.jrank.org/pages/13347/Morgan-v-Commonwealth-Virginia.html
(November 22, 2007).
[6]
Richard Goldstein, Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, Early Civil Rights Activist Whose
Suit Led to Supreme Court Decision Outlawing Segregation Seating on Interstate
Bus Lines in 1946, RIP, http://hymes.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/irene-morgan-kirkaldy-early-civil-rights-activist-whose-suit-led-to-supreme-court-decision-outlawing-segregated-seating-on-interstate-bus-lines-in-1946-rip/
(November 22, 2007).
December 2007 response by David Pilgrim, Curator, Jim Crow Museum
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