Elizabeth Jennings Graham

Before Rosa Parks: Taking on New York’s Segregated Street Car Companies. A black woman refused to give up her seat on a bus. She was brutally attacked and thrown off...and she took the case to court.

Her name was Elizabeth Jennings. It happened in New York City, downtown on the corner Pearl and Chatham Streets. It was on a Sunday, July 16, 1854. Elizabeth Jennings lived 100 years before Rosa Parks, a 24-year-old schoolteacher on her way to the First Colored Congregational Church, but (when) she insisted on her rights, he took hold of her by force to expel her. She resisted. The conductor got her down on the platform, jammed her bonnet, soiled her dress and injured her person. Quite a crowd gathered, but she effectually resisted. Finally, after the car had gone on further, with the aid of a policeman they succeeded in removing her."

The African American community was outraged, and the following day there was a rally at Jennings' church. A letter she had written telling her account of the incident was read aloud: "Sarah E. Adams & myself walked down to the corner of Pearl & Chatham Sts. to take the 3rd Ave cars," she wrote. She described how the conductor, thought to be one Edwin Moss, and the driver had attacked her. "I told him [Moss] I was a respectable person, born and raised in this city, that I did not know where he was from and that he was a good for nothing impudent fellow for insulting decent persons while on their way to church."

"Then," Jennings continued, "the (police) officer without listening to anything I had to say thrust me out and tauntingly told me to get redress if I could. I would have come up [to the rally] myself but I'm quite sore & stiff from the treatment I received from those monsters."

Jennings sued the company, the driver, and the conductor. Messrs. Culver, Parker, and Arthur represented her. Arthur was Chester A. Arthur, then a novice 21-year-old lawyer and future President of the United States. This law firm was hired because it had demonstrated some talent in the area of civil rights the year before.

Jennings was well off and well connected. Her father, Thomas Jennings, was an important businessman and community leader who had associations with Abyssinian and St. Phillips, two major African American churches. As a tailor, he held a patent on a method for renovating garments and maintained a shop on Church Street.

He and others who had been involved in the fight to end transit discrimination helped raise money for Jennings’ lawsuit. News of the trial reached all the way to San Francisco, where an African American group called the Young Men's Association passed a resolution condemning Jennings' treatment.

In 1855, Judge Rockwell of the Brooklyn Circuit Court ruled in Jennings’ favor, stating that: "Colored persons if sober, well behaved and free from disease, had the same rights as others and could neither be excluded by any rules of the Company, nor by force or violence."