Title: Irene Morgan Kirkaldy,
2000
Source: the Richmond
Times-Dispatch
More informationMorgan v. Virginia is an
often-overlooked landmark case of the civil rights movement. Decided on June 3, 1946, nearly a decade before
Rosa Parks challenged segregated seating on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court's
ruling in this case struck down Virginia's law requiring racial segregation in interstate public
transportation.
On July 16, 1944, twenty-seven-year-old Irene Morgan stepped onto a crowded Greyhound bus in Gloucester County, bound for Baltimore via Washington, D.C. After standing for several miles and sitting on the lap of an accommodating young black female passenger for a handful more, Morgan finally took a seat three rows from the back of the bus, in front of some white passengers. When the bus became crowded as it reached Saluda, Virginia, the bus driver insisted that Morgan yield her seat to a white passenger, as the local and state Jim Crow laws mandated racially segregated seating on public conveyances. After she refused and was forcibly removed from the bus, Morgan was arrested, tried, convicted of violating a state segregation ordinance, and fined ten dollars, which she refused to pay. She appealed, but the state appellate court upheld both the conviction and the fine.
By the following year, lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took on Morgan's case, including Spottswood Robinson, Oliver Hill, and Martin A. Martin of Virginia's NAACP, and the national organization's Thurgood Marshall and William H. Hastie. In October 1945 the NAACP asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their argument which contended that statutes requiring segregation on interstate carriers placed an undue burden on interstate commerce and thus violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Their position emphasized precedent in the 1878 case of Hall v. De Cuir, in which the Court had voided a Louisiana law prohibiting segregation on steamboats that traveled with passengers on the Mississippi River.
Title: You Don't Have to
Ride Jim Crow! (excerpt)
Source: Robin Washington
More informationOn June 3, 1946, the Supreme Court announced its
decision. In a 7 to 1 ruling, the Court reversed the Virginia appellate court and struck down the Virginia law
and, by extension, all similar laws in other states mandating Jim Crow practices on interstate conveyances.
Justice Stanley Forman Reed, of Kentucky, wrote the majority opinion for the Court. Justice Harold Burton, of
Ohio, was the lone dissenter. Justices Wiley Rutledge, Hugo Black, and Felix Frankfurter wrote concurring
opinions. Justice Robert Jackson was then presiding over the Nuremberg Trials and thus did not
participate.
Reed focused his opinion on two fundamental issues: first, whether the Virginia statute was repugnant to the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause. The second question focused on whether the Tenth Amendment gave a state "the power to require an interstate motor passenger to occupy a seat restricted for the use of his race." Reed then pointed out that it was only necessary to address the first question, since "if the statute unlawfully burdens interstate commerce, the reserved powers of the state will not validate it."
That the statute was repugnant to the Commerce Clause was clear to Reed. Before invoking the precedent set in Hall, he argued: The interferences to interstate commerce which arise from state regulation of racial association on interstate vehicles has long been recognized. Such regulation hampers freedom of choice in selecting accommodations … Seating arrangements for the different races in interstate motor travel require a single, uniform rule to promote and protect national travel. Consequently, we hold the Virginia statute in controversy invalid.
Title: 2005.02.26 - Irene
Morgan, clipped
Source: VFH Radio
More informationJustice Burton wrote an adamant dissent, asserting that
the Court's decision supplanted the role of Congress to establish uniformity in federal transportation if such
laws were necessary for interstate commerce. Justices Frankfurter and Black indicated that their sentiments
lay with Burton but that they embraced the principle of precedent and so supported the majority decision
because of the Hall decision.
Though in Morgan v. Virginia the Court firmly and clearly struck down Virginia's laws mandating segregated seating on interstate conveyances, nearly a year went by before the ramifications of the Morgan decision became evident. In April 1947, sixteen interracial passengers—eight white, eight black, and all members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR)—engaged in a "Journey of Reconciliation" to test adherence to the decision and to help educate people about the Court's decision. The journey was a precursor to the Freedom Rides that would pass through Virginia in May 1961.
Morgan, who later married and was known as Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, was a pioneer of the civil rights movement. She was honored by Gloucester County in 2000 and a year later received the Presidential Citizens Medal from U.S. president Bill Clinton. She died in 2007 at her daughter's home in Gloucester County.
First published: November 13, 2008 | Last modified: April 7, 2011
Email SignupVirginia Foundation for the Humanities | 145 Ednam Drive, Charlottesville, VA 22903-4629
Phone 434.924.3296 | Fax 434.296.4714
