There were more than one protest against the jimcrow streetcar lines 
of NYC in the 1840s and 1850s.  Thomas Downing, the oyster 
entrepreneur, was involved in one.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern 
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Travis, John" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, October 28, 2005 10:41 am
Subject: [NYHIST-L] Rosa Parks

> Not to take anything away from Rosa Park's heroic stand, but a 
> hundred yrs before her Elizabeth Jennings made a similar 
> determined stand on principle. 
> 
> An organist at the First Colored Congregational Church in NYC, 
> Elizabeth Jennings boarded a bus (a large horse-drawn carriage) on 
> July 16, 1854 to go to church.  In those years, "buses" were 
> designated White only, Colored Persons Allowed or, as in Jennings' 
> case, no sign and the decision was left up to the drivers' whims.  
> Whims that were enforced by the whips the drivers carried.
> 
> According to the New York Tribune, "...the conducter undertook to 
> get her off, first alleging the car was full; when this was shown 
> to be false, he pretended that the other passengers were 
> displeased by her presence; but when she insisted on her rights, 
> he took hold of her by force to expel her."  Asserting that she 
> was a respectable person, Elizabeth called him a good-for-nothing 
> impudent fellow for insulting decent persons on their way to church.
> 
> The Tribune notes "The conductor got down on the platform, jammed 
> her bonnet, soiled her dress and injured her person....with the 
> aid of a policeman they succeeded in removing her.
> 
> As with Rosa Parks, massive protest rallies followed.  Jennings 
> took the Railway Company to court.  Judge William Rockwell ruled 
> in her favor, saying "Colored people , if sober, welll-behaved and 
> free of disease, had the same rights as others and could neither 
> be excluded by any rules of the Company, nor by force or 
> violence."   She was awarded $500 in damages.  The next day, the 
> Third Avenue Railway Company issued an order to admit African-
> Americans to their buses.
> 
> Elizabeth Jennings married Charles Graham.  Sadly, their one-yr 
> old son, Thomas, died amidst the New York City Draft Riots brought 
> on by the 1863 Conscription Act.  Soliciting the help of a white 
> undertaker, she had the boy buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
> 
> Elizabeth Jennings Graham died in 1901.  But her legacy lives on 
> in Rosa Parks.
> 
> As Rosa Parks wrote "People always say that I didn't give up my 
> seat because I was tired, but that wasn't true...No, the only 
> tired I was, was tired of giving in."
> 
> 
> OH, YEAH -  ELIZABETH JENNINGS LAWYER WAS A YOUNG 24-YR OLD 
> ATTORNEY NAMED CHESTER A. ARTHUR, FUTURE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED 
> STATES.  CHESTER ARTHUR IS BURIED IN THE ALBANY RURAL CEMETERY.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Excerpted from:  Get on the Bus - 150 Years after Elizabeth 
> Jennings by Mickey Z.  (Counterpunch Newsletter - 7/21/2004)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> John N. Travis
> Albany County Historian
> 112 State St, Albany NY 12207
>