Sarah Keys V. Carolina Coach Company - Enforcement

Enforcement

Hailed by the press as a "symbol of a movement that cannot be held back," the Keys case marked a turning point in the legal battle against segregation, and a major departure from the ICC's history in racial matters. In the short term, however, it lay dormant, its intent thwarted by the one ICC commissioner who had dissented from the majority opinion, South Carolina Democrat J. Monroe Johnson. In his position as Chairman of the Commission, Johnson consistently failed to enforce the Keys ruling, and it was not until the summer of 1961, when the violence resulting from the Freedom Riders' campaign prompted Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to take action, that the impact of the Keys case was felt.

Impelled by the protests of civil rights leaders and the weight of international outrage at the brutality perpetrated on the Freedom Riders Kennedy took the unusual legal step of issuing a petition to the Interstate Commerce Commission on May 29, 1961, in which he called upon them to implement their own rulings. Citing the Keys and NAACP train case, along with the Supreme Court's 1960 Boynton v. Virginia ruling (364 US 454 (1960)) prohibiting segregation in terminal waiting rooms, restaurants and restrooms, the Attorney General called upon the ICC to issue specific regulations banning Jim Crow in interstate travel, and to take immediate steps to enforce those regulations.