(A series brought to you by Feminist Global Resistance)

The Series:

Patriarchy ensures that male (almost exclusively white colonizer) history is remembered though a few women shine through or are given a twisted footnote.

More often, women are relegated to lost tomes and forgotten lore. Some shine through in song and tales while others, more recently, are beginning to have their stories told (progress?)

Throughout history, women around the world have stood to fight patriarchy, some winning, some losing, but they often brought revolution and change, their lives given for the just causes of freedom, liberty and justice.

This series will focus on the stories of some of those women who have stood up to patriarchy fighting oppression and colonization; confronting violence and abuse; And sacrificing everything in a fight for freedom, justice, and human rights.  There have been many.  I have chosen just a few of those who inspire me by their bravery and resolve.

Learn their names, learn from them, let them inspire you to do great things.

 

Part 11: Before Rosa, there was Irene – The Bus Ride of Irene Amos Morgan (Kirkaldy)

Irene Amos Morgan, aka, Irene Morgan Kirkaldy: Born April 9, 1917, Baltimore, Maryland; Died August 10, 2007, Gloucester, Virginia

 

“When something’s wrong, it’s wrong and needs to be corrected.” ~ Irene Amos Morgan

After the U.S. Civil War, slavery was abolished but anti-Black racism continued to spread throughout the United States.

The rise of the Ku Klux Klan during “Reconstruction” and its resurrection in the 1920’s saw membership grow and acceptance by many in the mainstream.

Founded in 1865, the KKK spread to every southern state by 1870.  The Klan’s organized terrorism was focused on Black Americans and white Republican leaders. Their violence and influence began to ebb at the turn of the century but a resurgence came soon after the release of the film, “Birth of A Nation”, in 1915. Whereas the original KKK was a violent, racist organization born in the post-Civil War South, from Confederate veterans, disenfranchised plantation owners and white farmers, the modern Klan was driven by a membership of white, lower middle-class, Protestant Americans in the North and Midwest fearful that immigrants were changing traditional American culture. They responded with anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism as well as anti-Black hate. By the early 1920’s, their membership grew to include millions of US citizens and spread north and west. By 1924, more than 40 percent of all Klan membership could be found in just three states – Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

Today, the KKK is still active with chapters in 41 of 50 states.

It wasn’t just the KKK that kept racism in play. Mainstream “White America” remained fearful of anyone “of color”; or from non-European cultures; or practicing any religion outside of Protestantism; or promoting ideas that challenged the status quo.  Incidents, inspired by fear and racism, continue to be committed by “average citizens” as well as those who have thought they could capitalize on those fears. From the destruction and massacre of “Black Wall Street”, in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, OK, in 1921, to the red-lining ( “the practice of denying credit to residents of predominantly minority neighborhoods.”)  of neighborhoods that continues to this day, fear, ignorance and hate have caused bloodshed of innocents and oppression of peoples as well as the abuse of law.

One of the most potent weapons in the arsenal of established racism is segregation.  Throughout US history, segregation has been practiced to keep people, considered “undesirable”, away from “white folks” – From small town “Sundown” rules (be out if town by sundown) to big city housing discrimination.  Many of these practices can still be seen today – some implied, or inferred while others are more blatant.

 

 

Jim Crow:

The roots of Jim Crow laws began following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States. After the Civil War and the freeing of nearly 4 million slaves, the question as to the status of “freedmen” and “freedwomen” in the United States had to be addressed.

Andrew Johnson had just become president after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Johnson, though a supporter of the Union, was not one to support imposing rule or order over the states.  Unlike his predecessor, Johnson believed the federal government had no say in issues such as voting requirements, worker rights or any other rules or laws at the state level. His “Reconstruction” plan, beginning in May of 1865, only required that the former Confederate states were to uphold the abolition of slavery, swear loyalty to the Union and pay off their war debt. Beyond those limitations, the states and their ruling class, traditionally dominated by white plantation owners, were given a “free hand” in rebuilding their own governments.

Strict local and state laws, or “Black Codes”, began to be established across much of the formerly “Confederate” South, setting tight controls as to when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation. The “Codes” began to appear as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to remove voting rights, to control where they lived and how they traveled, and to seize children for labor purposes.

The Codes restrictive nature and the widespread Black resistance spreading across the South enraged many of the people in the North. They argued that the fundamental principles of “free labor” were being violated by those codes. In 1867, the Civil Rights Act passed (Over Johnson’s veto) and the Republicans took control of Reconstruction.

Soon The Reconstruction Act of 1867 passed requiring southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment, granting “equal protection” of former enslaved people, and enacting universal male suffrage before they could rejoin the Union.

By 1870, the 15^th Amendment, guaranteeing that a citizen’s right to vote could not be denied “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”, was passed bringing with it he opportunity for Black people to run for elective office.  Between1867 and 1877, Black men were winning elections across the south at both state and federal levels.  Black Codes were being removed but by the end of Reconstruction, the gains made by Black people were eroding.

The “ideal” of white supremacy held on.  Discrimination, which had been kept at bay during the later years of Reconstruction came roaring back with the rise of “Jim Crow”.

“Jim Crow” laws began as local statutes that legalized racial segregation in Southern communities across the United Sates. Named after a Black minstrel show character, the laws lasted from the post-Civil War and Reconstruction era until 1968. The laws enacted, specifically, to marginalize Black Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education or other opportunities. Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence and death.

In the 1880’s, the Black population in rural areas – attempting to escape poverty, oppression and violence due to both the Black Codes and the Ku Klux Klan – began moving into the larger cities where they had more opportunities and fewer restrictions.  As that migration continued, white city dwellers demanded more laws to limit opportunities for Black Americans.  The Jim Crow Laws began to spread across the nation.

Jim Crow brought segregation to cities and towns across many states from the South to the North:

• Black Americans were forbidden from entering public parks.
• Black people could not use public libraries.
• Blacks and whites went to county fairs on different days.
• Theaters and restaurants were segregated.
• Segregated waiting rooms and areas in bus and train stations were required.
• Railroads were required to have separate cars for Black and white passengers; buses were to have Black sections in the back of the bus while white people rode in the front
• Segregated water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows were required.
• Black Americans were forbidden from living in white neighborhoods.
• Segregation was enforced for public pools, phone booths, hospitals, asylums, jails and residential homes for the elderly and handicapped.
• Some states required separate textbooks for Black and white students.
• New Orleans mandated the segregation of prostitutes according to race; Atlanta, Black Americans in court were given a different Bible from white people to swear on.
• Marriage and cohabitation, between white and Black people, was strictly forbidden in most Southern states.
• It was not uncommon to see signs posted at town and city limits warning Black Americans that they were not welcome there.

In the first half of the 20^th Century, Jim Crow flourished.  As the laws expanded so did the violence against Black people – lynchings, bombing, beatings, and murders were on the rise (perpetrators of violence against Blacks knew they would rarely, if ever, be prosecuted) but, as the laws and violence expanded, resistance to the racism, hate and violence grew within the Black communities.

Activists rose…

 

HER Story

 

On April 9, 1917, Irene Amos was born in Baltimore, Maryland. The granddaughter of former slaves, Irene was the sixth of nine children born to Robert and Ethel Amos. The Amos’ were devout members of the Seventh-Day Adventist church in which Irene was raised.

 

By the time Irene was born, Plessy v Ferguson had been in place for over 20 years.  On May 18, 1896, the US Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Melville Fuller, had struck down the 1875 Civil Rights Act, that had made discrimination and segregation illegal, opening the way for Jim Crow laws to explode across the nation.  “Separate but Equal” became the law of the land.

In 1917, women still had to wait 3 more years before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed granting them the right to vote – even then, many Black women would not be allowed to vote due to Jim Crow laws

 

Irene attended local schools until, like many children at the time, she dropped out of high school, to work and help her family during the Great Depression, picking up odd jobs cleaning, doing laundry, and providing child care.

Irene, eventually, was hired to work production line, at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company in Baltimore, Maryland, making parachutes for B-26 Marauders . It was there that she met a dock worker, Sherwood Morgan, and the couple soon married in approximately 1940. They were the parents of two children; a son, Sherwood Morgan, Jr. and a daughter, Brenda Morgan.

 

By 1940, there had been a few gains in Civil Rights for black Americans but Jim Crow was still strong:

• 1903 – Giles v. Harris (Alabama) refused to order the board of registrars to register an African American to vote in part because the court concluded that unless it could actually supervise elections, it was unable to force white Alabamans to allow African Americans to vote

• 1906 – Hodges v. United States (Arkansas) reversed a conviction against whites who had ejected “citizens of the United States of African descent” from their jobs; the decision narrowed the congressional civil rights authority under the Thirteenth Amendment

• 1910 – Franklin v. State of South Carolina affirmed the judgment of the South Carolina Supreme Court to execute African American Pink Franklin for the killing of a white constable, H. E. Valentine. Franklin shot Valentine when he came to arrest Franklin for violating a peonage-based contract for work

• 1911 – Bailey v. State of Alabama invalidated, based on the Thirteenth Amendment, a law that facilitated “debt peonage,” a form of involuntary servitude

• 1913 – Guinn v. United States (Oklahoma) deemed that state constitutional provisions permitting “grandfather clauses” for passing literacy tests as a voting requirement were unconstitutional

• 1917 – Buchanan v. Warley (Kentucky) held residential racial segregation unconstitutional

• 1927 – Nixon v. Herndon (Texas) struck down a 1923 Texas law that prohibited Blacks from voting in the Democratic Party primary

• 1932 – Nixon v. Condon (Texas) declared that the prohibition of African Americans from the Democratic primaries by the executive committee was unconstitutional

• 1935 – Pearson v. Murray (Maryland), Daniel Gaines Murray, an African American, was admitted to the University of Maryland Law School when the Maryland Court of Appeals concluded that the state had failed to provide Murray with a separate but equal education

• 1938 – Missouri ex. rel. Gaines v. Canada (Missouri), the Supreme Court held that states providing a law school for white students were constitutionally required to provide in-state education for African American students as well, either by integrating the state law school or creating a separate school for African Americans

• 1939 – Creation of the Civil Liberties Unit, later renamed the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice, the first federal entity tasked with the protection of civil rights since Reconstruction

 

The Great Depression followed by the advent of World War II were responsible for an acceleration in social change.  

 The War brought the migration of Black, Hispanic and indigenous workers to industrialized cities in the North and West as employment in the defense industry and government expanded. Women were now encouraged to work outside the home and became the backbone of industry as men went off to war. Black workers and their families were moving out of the Jim Crow states to find opportunities in areas that had no restrictions on voting rights.  For the first time, both Democratic and Republican parties began to court Black voters.

 That war also spurred a new militancy among Black Americans. The NAACP, emboldened by the record of Black servicemen in the war, a new corps of brilliant young lawyers, and steady financial support from white philanthropists, initiated major attacks against discrimination and segregation, even in the Jim Crow South.

 

By 1941, the modern Civil Rights Movement was born.

 

 

“If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus”

Carver Neblett

If you miss me at the back of the bus, and you can’t find me nowhere.
Come on up to the front of the bus, I’ll be sittin’ right there.
I’ll be sittin’ right there,
I’ll be sittin’ right there.
Come on up to the front of the bus,
I’ll be sittin’ right there.

 

If you miss me at the Mississippi River, and you can’t find me nowhere.
Come on over to the swimmin’ pool, I’ll be swimmin’ over there.
I’ll be swimmin’ over there,
I’ll be swimmin’ over there.
Come on over to the swimmin’ pool,
I’ll be swimmin’ over there.

 

If you miss me at Jackson State, and you can’t find me nowhere.
Come on over to Old Miss, I’ll be learnin’ right there.
I’ll be learnin’ right there,
I’ll be learnin’ right there.
Come on over to Old Miss,
I’ll be learnin’ right there.

 

If you miss me at the picket lines, and you can’t find me nowhere.
Come on down, to the jailhouse, I’ll be roomin’ over there.
I’ll be roomin’ over there,
I’ll be roomin’ over there.
Come on down to the jailhouse,
I’ll be roomin’ over there.

 

If you miss me at the cotton fields, and you can’t find me nowhere.
Come on down to the court house, I’ll be votin’ right there.
I’ll be votin’ right there,
I’ll be votin’ right there.
Come on down to the courthouse,
I’ll be votin’ right there.

 

If you miss me at the back of the bus, and you can’t find me nowhere.
Come on up to the front of the bus, I’ll be sittin’ up there.
I’ll be sittin’ up there,
I’ll be sittin’ up there.
Come on up to the front of the bus,
I’ll be sitting’ up there

 

It was on July 16, 1944, that Irene Amos Morgan boarded a Greyhound bus, choosing a seat next to another Black woman who was carrying an infant. Due to Jim Crow, a Black passenger could not sit next to or across from a white passenger and had to sit in the designated “Black” seats on the bus (Daniel B. Moskowitz, No, I Will Not Move to the Back of the Bus, 52 AM. HIST. 40, 41; 2017).

Irene had been visiting her mother in Gloucester, VA, after suffering a miscarriage. Irene had been feeling ill and decided to return to Baltimore for a doctor’s visit. It was while on her way back to Baltimore that the bus ride turned momentous.

When a white couple boarded the bus at a stop in Middlesex County, Virginia, the bus driver ordered Irene and her seatmate to give up their seats in order for the white couple to sit.  Irene’s seatmate immediately complied and relinquished her seat to the couple.  Irene, however refused. In response to Irene’s refusal, the bus driver drove to the next town, Saluda, VA; Got off the bus to find a sheriff; The sheriff presented Irene with an arrest warrant; Irene tore the warrant into pieces and threw  them out the window. When the sheriff went to pull her out of her seat, Irene proceeded to kick him in the groin. After composing himself, the sheriff got off the bus – a different sheriff was sent on.

Irene later said:

“He touched me, that’s when I kicked him in a very bad place. He hobbled off, and another one came on. I was going to bite him, but he looked dirty, so I clawed him instead. I ripped his shirt. We were both pulling at each other. He said he would use his nightstick. I said, ‘We’ll whip each other’”.

The second sheriff got off the bus to find the deputy.

Irene Amos Morgan was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and violating Virginia’s Jim Crow transit law. Her mother came up to Saluda and paid her bail.

On October 18, 1944, Irene attended her court case. She agreed to pay the $100 fine for resisting arrest but refused plead guilty to and pay the $10 fine for the violation of “Section 4097dd of the Virginia Code” (the segregation violation) which stated:

“4097dd. Violation by passengers; misdemeanor; ejection. — All persons who fail while on any motor vehicle carrier, to take and occupy the seat or seats or other space assigned to them by the driver, operator, or other person in charge of such vehicle, or by the person whose duty it is to take up tickets or collect fares from passengers therein, or who fail to obey the directions of any such driver, operator, or other person in charge, as aforesaid, to change their seats from time to time as occasions require, pursuant to any lawful rule, regulation, or custom in force by such lines as to assigning separate seats or other space to white and colored persons, respectively, having been first advised of the fact of such regulation and requested to conform thereto, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not less than five dollars nor more than twenty-five dollars for each offense. Furthermore, such persons may be ejected from such vehicle by any driver, operator, or person in charge of said vehicle, or by any police officer or other conservator of the peace, and in case such persons ejected shall have paid their fares upon said vehicle, they shall not be entitled to the return of any part of same. For the refusal of any such passenger to abide by the request of the person in charge of said vehicle as aforesaid, and his consequent ejection from said vehicle, neither the driver, operator, person in charge, owner, manager, nor bus company operating said vehicle shall be liable for damages in any court.”

Irene Amos Morgan and her attorney, Spottswood Robinson, first appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court .  They argued that segregation laws obstructed interstate commerce, not that the laws were unconstitutional. Unfortunately, that strategy failed. The Virginia Supreme Court ruled against her.

Irene was not to be deterred. The NAACP heard about her case got involved. She and her new team of lawyers, led by Thurgood Marshall and William H. Hastie, appealed the case and went before the United States Supreme Court in Irene Morgan v Commonwealth of Virginia.

Morgan v. Virginia was decided on June 3, 1946.  In a 7 – 1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Virginia law requiring racial segregation on commercial interstate buses as a violation of the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Justice Stanley F. Reed wrote, in his opinion for the court, that Virginia’s transit laws were unconstitutional and that “seating arrangements for the different races in interstate motor travel require a single, uniform rule to promote and protect national travel.” The ruling meant that bus companies would have to have racially integrated seating now. The concept of “separate, but equal” was no longer.

Irene moved on with her life – her family moved to New York City while the Court battles raged.  Two years after the decision, Irene lost her husband and became a single mother trying to support her family.  She regretted that she had quit school and never finished her education.

She later met and married Stanley Kirkaldy, and they remained married until his death.

Irene eventually went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from St. John’s University in 1985 at 68; She earned a Master’s degree in Urban Studies from Queens College in 1990 at the age of 72.

Irene was awarded for her determination and contributions to the Civil Rights Movement, including receiving the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001 from President Bill Clinton and the Freedom Fighter Award from the NAACP in 2002.

 

*****

 

Irene Amos Morgan was not a trained activist, like Rosa Parks; She did not have the support and backing of an organization laser focused on destroying bus segregation.

Irene stood by herself and set a precedent used by all those activists and organizations that followed. She led the way for the Freedom Riders and the Rosa Parks who came later.