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Irene Morgan

Irene Morgan was a civil rights pioneer from Baltimore whose “defiance of white supremacy while traveling through the upper south in the summer of 1944 led to a supreme court decision outlawing segregated seating on interstate bus lines”. Morgan often goes overlooked in the fight against segregation and the civil rights movement, when thinking of bus boycotts the first person that comes to mind is Rosa Parks and her “storied refusal to yield her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.” Irene Morgan’s defiance against segregation and court case happened nearly a decade before Rosa Park’s.

Irene Morgan was a worker in a plant that made World War II bombers. Morgan was also a mother of two children and lived in Baltimore. July of 1944 was when Irene Morgan made history as she boarded a greyhound bus to visit her mother in Gloucester County Virginia. Moran, a 27 year old mother of two who had also just suffered from a miscarriage, was just looking for a comfortable seat for the long ride home to Baltimore. “She settled into an isle seat in the fourth row from the back – in the section designated under Virginia’s segregation laws for black passengers”, next to a mother sitting with her infant. 30 minutes into the ride the bus stopped and two white passengers boarded the bus.

The bus began to get crowded and the driver told Morgan to get up so a white person could have her seat, Morgan refused and told the woman next to her to stay put, and resisted a sheriff that tried to physically take her off of the bus. Morgan resisted by kicking the sheriff that tried to arrest her and yelling, “you don’t have to ride Jim Crow!” She also said, “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.” After Morgan refused, the driver of the bus took the bus to the jail in Saluda, Virginia, and gained a warrant for her arrest. Morgan took the warrant, tore it up, and threw it out the window. Morgan pleaded guilty in the coming October and was fined $100 for resisting arrest which she paid for, but refused to pay the $10 fine for “violating a Virginia law requiring segregated seating in public transportation.”

The highest level of court in Virginia ruled against Irene Morgan, so the NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court. On June 3, 1946 the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 1 in favor of Mrs. Morgan. Although she won the court case the southern state did not follow the ruling. The case inspired the first freedom rides. “In 1947 eight African Americans and eight whites rode together on interstate buses. They were arrested repeatedly for violating state laws on segregated transportation. Despite the Morgan Ruling African American mobility was still constrained.” Freedom riders were later arrested in North Carolina for testing the upper south’s compliance of the law.

Irene Morgan, who was born in Baltimore, lived on Long Island and ran a child care center in Queens with her second husband. She received her bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University when she was 68 years old. Five years later Morgan earned a master’s degree in Urban Studies from Queens College. In 2000, “Gloucester County, where Irene Morgan got on that bus six decades earlier, and where she lived in her final years, honored her on its 350th anniversary. A year later, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential citizens medal. “When Irene Morgan boarded a bus for Baltimore in the summer of 1944,” the citation read, “she took the first step on a journey that would change America Forever.”” Morgan’s strategy was proven for fighting racial segregation in the courts, and made Morgan a national icon set the stage for Rosa Parks similar defiance 11 years later.

Irene Morgan had two children, her daughter, Brenda Morgan Bacquie from Hayes, and her son, Sherwood Morgan Jr. from Dover, Delaware, who came from her marriage to Sherwood Morgan Sr. who passed away in 1948. She also has a sister and brother, Justine Walker from Baltimore, and James Ethel Laforest. She had five grandchildren and four great grandchildren.