Irene Morgan  

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Irene Morgan (b. 1917) was an important predecessor to Rosa Parks in the successful fight to overturn segregationist laws in the United States. Like the more famous Parks, but 11 years earlier, in 1944, the 27-year-old Morgan was arrested and jailed for refusing to give up her seat on an interstate Greyhound bus to a white person.

In July 1944, Morgan was a 27-year-old mother of two, living in Gloucester County, Virginia. She had been ill and one Sunday morning she boarded a Greyhound bus for Baltimore, where she was to see a doctor. She sat down four rows from the back of the bus, in the section for "colored" people. When a white couple needed seats, the driver told Morgan and her seatmate to move farther back. Morgan said no.

The bus driver stopped in Middlesex County, Virginia, and summoned the sheriff, who tried to arrest Morgan. She tore up the arrest warrant, kicked the sheriff and fought with the deputy who tried to drag her off the bus. He succeeded, however, and Morgan was jailed for resisting arrest and violating Virginia's segregation law.

When she went to court, Morgan pleaded guilty to the first charge (resisting arrest) and paid a $100 fine. She pleaded not guilty to the second charge, but was found guilty and fined $10.

Morgan appealed her case on the conviction for violating the segregation laws and her lawyers appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1946, the justices ruled 6-1 that Virginia's law enforcing segregation on interstate buses was illegal.

Her case, Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, Template:Ussc, was argued by Thurgood Marshall, the chief counsel of the NAACP and later himself an Associate Supreme Court Justice. The action resulted in a landmark ruling in 1946, which struck down state laws requiring segregation in situations involved interstate transportation. Marshall used an innovative strategy to argue the case. Instead of relying upon the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, Marshall argued successfully that segregation on interstate travel violated the Interstate Commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

"If something happens to you which is wrong, the best thing to do is have it corrected in the best way you can," said Morgan. "The best thing for me to do was to go to the Supreme Court."

Despite the successful ruling, Southern states refused to obey Morgan v. Virginia. Morgan's case helped inspire in 1947 the first Freedom Ride, during which 16 Civil Rights activists rode on interstate buses and trains to challenge the South's continued and calculated defiance of the Supreme Court's edict. The 16 activists were black and white members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. The travels were called the "Journey of Reconciliation". They lasted for two weeks and resulted in twelve arrests.

"[W]hen something's wrong, it's wrong. It needs to be corrected", said Morgan years later. Morgan's story has been mostly overlooked by history books, but she has been collecting honors in the past few years since 1995, when she appeared in a public television documentary about her case and the Journey of Reconciliation.

In 2000, Morgan was honored by Gloucester County (Virginia) during its 350th anniversary celebration. And in 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Irene Morgan" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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