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