Irene Morgan

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Irene Kirkaldy
)
Irene Morgan
Born(1917-04-09)April 9, 1917
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
DiedAugust 10, 2007(2007-08-10) (aged 90)
Gloucester County, Virginia, U.S.
Children2

Irene Amos Morgan (April 9, 1917 – August 10, 2007), later known as Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, was an

B-26 Marauders
.

Morgan consulted with attorneys to appeal her conviction and the

Commerce clause
protected interstate traffic. But neither Virginia nor other states observed the ruling and it was not enforced for decades.

Early life, education and family

Irene Morgan was born in 1917 in Baltimore. She went to local schools and was raised as a Seventh-day Adventist. Morgan married Sherwood Morgan Sr., and had a son and daughter with him.[1] He died in 1948.

During

B-26 Marauder
.

She later married Stanley Kirkaldy and lived with him in New York City. They ran a dry-cleaning business and a child-care center near where they lived in

Queens College.[3]

Arrest, jail and conviction

Irene Morgan had been dealing with a recent miscarriage and was visiting her mother in

B-26 Marauder, Morgan boarded a Greyhound to return to Baltimore. On July 16, 1944, Morgan boarded the Greyhound bus and had sat down next to another African-American woman who was carrying an infant. An African-American could not sit next to or across from a Caucasian passenger, but there were no designated "black" or "white" seats on the bus.[4] When a white couple boarded the bus at a stop in Middlesex County, Virginia, the bus driver ordered Morgan and her seatmate to surrender their seats. Her seatmate immediately retreated to the back of the bus with her infant, but Morgan refused to give up her spot. When Morgan would not move, the bus driver got off the bus to find a sheriff. The sheriff presented Morgan with an arrest warrant, but she tore up the piece of paper and threw it out of the window of the bus. When the sheriff touched her to pull her out of her seat, she kicked him in the groin. The sheriff got off the bus and a different sheriff was sent on. "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'".[5]
The second sheriff got off the bus to grab the deputy.

Morgan was arrested. She had been charged with resisting arrest and violating Virginia's Jim Crow transit law. On October 18, 1944, Morgan attended her court case. She agreed to pay a $100 fine for resisting arrest but refused to plead to the segregation violation. Since Maryland did not enforce segregation for interstate travel, Virginia's Jim Crow law could possibly not apply to Morgan. Morgan's case, with the help of the NAACP, was taken to the Virginia Supreme Court. The supreme court ruled her in violation of the law. Morgan then took her case to the U.S. Supreme Court and won.[6]

U.S. Supreme Court case

Her case, Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 328 U.S. 373 (1946), was argued by William H. Hastie, the former governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands and later a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP was co-counsel. He later was appointed as a US Supreme Court justice.[7]

The

U.S. Constitution.[10]

"If something happens to you which is wrong, the best thing to do is have it corrected in the best way you can," said Morgan. "The best thing for me to do was to go to the Supreme Court."[citation needed]

In 1960, in

Jim Crow
system.

Journey of Reconciliation

Morgan's case inspired the 1947

Trailways bus lines. They usually placed an interracial pair in the white-area of the bus. Other activists, disguised as ordinary passengers, rode in the racial sections "reserved" for them by segregation law.[10]

The group traveled uneventfully through Virginia, but when they reached North Carolina, they encountered arrests and violence. By the end of the Journey, the protesters had conducted over 24 "tests," and endured 12 arrests and dangerous mob violence. In a flagrant violation of the Morgan decision, North Carolina police arrested the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. A jury convicted him and he was sentenced to 22 days on a chain gang for violating the state's segregation laws, although he had been riding on an interstate bus.[10]

The 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, ahead of its time in the use of tactics of nonviolent direct action, inspired the highly publicized

Freedom Rides
of 1961, also organized by CORE.

Death

Irene Morgan Kirkaldy's grave

Irene Morgan was a lifelong member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. She died in

Gloucester, Virginia on August 10, 2007, at her daughter's home, at age 90 from complications of Alzheimer's disease. Her funeral was at Gloucester High School.[7][12]

Legacy and honors

Representation in other media

See also

References

  1. ^ "Irene Morgan". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2019-09-03.
  2. ^ "The Freedom Rider a Nation Nearly Forgot". The Washington Post. 30 July 2000. Retrieved 2019-09-03.
  3. ^ Goldstein, Richard (13 August 2007). "Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, 90, Rights Pioneer, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved 2019-09-03.
  4. ^ Moskowitz, Daniel. "No, I Will Not Move to the Back of the Bus". Academic Search Complete. American History. Retrieved 6 March 2018.[permanent dead link]
  5. ISBN 978-0-19-513674-6
    .
  6. ^ Lyden, Jacki (5 August 2000). "Interview: Irene Morgan Kirkaldy discusses the 1944 in which she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white couple". Weekend All Things Considered. Retrieved 6 March 2018.
  7. ^ a b "Milestones", Time, August 27, 2007, p. 23.
  8. ^ photo of Washington Afro-American newspaper with headline "Supreme Court votes 6-1 in Morgan Case"
  9. ^ "Morgan v. Virginia (June 3, 1946)". www.encyclopediavirginia.org. Retrieved 2015-11-04.
  10. ^ a b c d "Jim Crow Stories: Richard Wormser, "'Morgan v. Virginia' (1946)" , The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, 2002, PBS, accessed 5 February 2013
  11. ^ "Equal Access to Public Accommodations" - The Civil Rights Movement in Virginia Archived 2013-05-31 at the Wayback Machine, Virginia Historical Society
  12. ^ "U.S. civil rights pioneer Irene Morgan Kirkaldy remembered for courage". Adventist News Network. 19 August 2007. Retrieved 2018-10-15.
  13. ^ "Maryland Women's Hall of Fame". MWHF. Retrieved July 27, 2012.

External links

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