Irene Morgan (April 9, 1917 – August 10, 2007), later known as Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, was an important predecessor to Rosa Parks in the successful fight to overturn segregation laws in the United States. Like the more famous Parks, but eleven years earlier, in 1944, the 27-year-old Baltimore-born African-American was arrested and jailed in Virginia for refusing to give up her seat on an interstate Greyhound bus to a white person. In a 1946 landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that Virginia's state law enforcing segregation on interstate buses was illegal.
Read more about Irene Morgan: Arrest, Jail and Conviction, Landmark U.S. Supreme Court Case, Journey of Reconciliation, Legacy
Famous quotes containing the word morgan:
“O, pluck was he to the backbone and clear grit through and through;
Boasted and bragged like a trooper; but the big words wouldn’t do;
The boy was dying, sir, dying, as plain as plain could be,
Worn out by his ride with Morgan up from the Tennessee.”
—Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894)