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Jeanette Reese

Jeanette Reese is one of the many women who were arrested for refusing to give their seat to a white person on segregated busses. She worked for a high ranking police official. After her arrests and the arrests of other women such as Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin, a lawsuit shortly followed. The lawsuit, Browder v. Gayle, resulted in the end of the bus segregation law in Alabama in 1956. During her participation in the lawsuit, she eventually pulled out due to pressure from white authorities. Her job position also influenced her decision to drop from the lawsuit. Reese later said that if she had not done what she did then she would not have been alive.

Before the Browder v. Gayle lawsuit, Reese along with 4 other women: Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder Coleman, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, were approached by Fred Grey, E.D Nixon, and Clifford Durr. These men approached the five women to have them partake in the trial. These five women all refused to give their seats on a bus and faced harsher discrimination because of it. Reese suffered from partaking in the lawsuit as it would have made her life worse. Once the legal proceedings were about to begin, Reese made the decision to pull out of the case. Once Reese removed herself from the case, this caused the white community to be more aggressive to Fred Grey. Once the lawsuit was officially filed, the rumors began spreading about Reese’s decision to withdraw from the case. She kept Grey as a lawyer and later stated that he had acted without her consent with connection to the Browder v. Gayle lawsuit. The threats that Reese dealt with scared others who were a part of the lawsuit. The Montgomery Improvement Association did what they could to ensure that the association would support those involved. Reese’s decision to pull out caused tensions in the black community.

References

“Browder v. Gayle, 352 U.S. 903.” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Stanford University, April 4, 2018. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/browder-v-gayle-352-us-903. Jackson, Troy, and Clayborne Carson. Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2011. “Jeanetta Reese Withdraws from Browder v. Gayle.” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Stanford University, December 14, 2018. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/jeanatta-reese-withdraws-browder-v-gayle. Michael Eniola Oshindoro. "Unknown women of bus boycott". The BG News: Bowling Green State University. February 8, 2020 Saturday. https://advance.lexis.com/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:5Y5J-JV61-DY7P-T4RF-00000-00&context=1516831. Walt Harrington. "'A Person Who Wanted To Be Free'". The Washington Post. October 08, 1995, Sunday, Final Edition. https://advance.lexis.com/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:3S7T-4930-0088-P4D3-00000-00&context=1516831. Zack Sorenson. "The True Story Of Rosa Parks". The Libertarian Institute. June 12, 2019 Wednesday. https://advance.lexis.com/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:5WG2-5591-JCMP-544F-00000-00&context=1516831.