Irene Morgan

Irene Morgan (April 9, 1917 – August 10, 2007), later known as Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, was an important predecessor to Rosa Parks in the successful fight to overturn segregation laws in the United States. Like the more famous Parks, but eleven years earlier, in 1944, the 27-year-old Baltimore-born African-American was arrested and jailed in Virginia for refusing to give up her seat on an interstate Greyhound bus to a white person. In a 1946 landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-1 that Virginia's state law enforcing segregation on interstate buses was illegal. The bus driver stopped in Middlesex County, Virginia, and summoned the sheriff, who tried to arrest Morgan. She tore up the arrest warrant, kicked the sheriff in the...