Here’s a little-known Black history fact:


 The desegregation of buses across state lines started before Rosa Parks made her stand in Montgomery.


Four years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Alabama, there was Private First Class Sarah Keys from the Keyesville area of Washington, North Carolina. On August 1, 1951, she was traveling from Fort Dix, New Jersey, back home to North Carolina when she was told to give up her seat to a white Marine and move to the back of the bus.


Sarah refused. In response, the driver made all the passengers get off, sent them to another bus, and didn’t let Sarah board it. When she asked why she couldn’t ride, she was arrested and spent 13 hours in jail. Later, she was fined $25 for “disorderly conduct,” then finally allowed to continue home.


But Sarah didn’t stop there. With the help of her lawyer, Dovey Johnson Roundtree, she took her case to the Interstate Commerce Commission. It took four years, but in 1955, the ICC ruled in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company that segregation on buses traveling between states was illegal under the Interstate Commerce Act.

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