<font size="5"><center>
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy,
the original 'Freedom Rider' dies at 90</font size></center>
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy smiles as she was honored
in 2005
The Afro American
By AFRO Staff
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a belatedly-recognized pioneer in the civil disobedience movement, died Aug. 10 at her daughter's home in Gloucester, Va. She was 90.
"We thank God she had a peaceful passing," said granddaughter Aleah Bacquie Vaughn in an interview with the AFRO. "When she died, she was holding my mother's (Brenda Morgan Bacquie) hand."
More than a decade before Rosa Parks' definitive act of civil disobedience in 1955, Morgan bucked Jim Crow and, with the help of Thurgood Marshall, took her case to the Supreme Court and won.
It was a hot, humid July day in 1944 when Morgan had her meeting with destiny. The 27-year-old widowed mother of two boarded a Greyhound bus in Gloucester, Va., headed north on what was then Route 17, bound for her Baltimore home soon after suffering from a miscarriage. She took a seat next to a young mother with an infant, about midway in the "Colored" section, where she was forced to sit by law. But just a few miles down the road, Morgan and her seatmate were ordered to get up to make room for a White couple boarding the bus. Morgan said no.
"She was sitting where Negroes at that time were supposed to sit. She paid for her seat. She just thought that wasn't right [and] she refused to do it," said her husband Stanley Kirkaldy in a 2005 interview with the AFRO.
After Morgan refused to relinquish her seat, the driver directed the bus to the town of Saluda, stopping outside the jail, where a sheriff's deputy boarded the bus with a warrant for Morgan's arrest. She ripped it up and threw it out the window. That act of bold defiance must have embarrassed the deputy and forced him to act at his own peril.
<center><font size="4">"She said anybody would have done what she did
but everybody would not have done it," Cooke said.
"That was a courageous stance; she took a stand not to stand."</font size></center>
"When I refused to give up my seat, then they said, 'We'll have you arrested.' Well, I said, `That's perfectly all right'; but when he put his hands on me, well, then that's when I kicked him," said Morgan during a television interview in 2001.
That deputy staggered off the bus and another came on and attempted to put his hands on Morgan, but she fought him also. One account claimed the second deputy threatened to hit Morgan with a nightstick, to which she replied, "We'll whip each other."
Famed Richmond, Va. attorney Spottswood Robinson, who was later tapped to be one of the lawyers arguing the Brown Supreme Court case in 1954, represented Morgan. He argued that segregation laws were impractical because they impeded interstate commerce. The "impractical" argument had been used in many of the cases leading up to the Brown decision, but the Middlesex Circuit Court ruled against Morgan and she was ordered to pay a $10 fine.
However, two NAACP lawyers, William Hastie, dean of the Howard University Law School, and Thurgood Marshall, appealed the case on her behalf before the Supreme COurt in 1946.
"..The national business of interstate commerce is not to be disfigured by the disruptive local practices bred of racial notions alien to our national ideal," argued Marshall.
The court agreed with him. On June 3, 1946, they reached a 6-1 decision that struck down Virginia's statute on buses traveling from state to state.
"As no state law can reach beyond its own border, nor bar transportation of passengers across its boundaries, diverse seating requirements for the races in interstate journeys result...It seems clear to us that 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," wrote the Court.
A year after the Morgan decision, the "original freedom riders," eight White and eight Black activists from the newly-formed Congress of Racial Equality, began the two-week "Journey of Reconciliation" to test the new law. "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow," was the soaring anthem —— inspired by Morgan's courageous act of defiance —— sung by the activists as they traveled throughout the South.
When you ride interstate, Jim Crow is dead / Get on the bus, sit anyplace, `Cause Irene Morgan won her case.
Despite being immortalized in song, history books obscured Morgan's contribution for decades, until her birthplace of Gloucester, Va., honored her during the town's 350th anniversary in 2001. Then President Bill Clinton also recognized her that year with the Presidential Citizens Medal —— the second-highest civilian honor in the United States.
Dr. Dorothy Cooke, a retired educator who had a major role in unveiling Mrs. Kirkaldy's legacy to the public eye, said history will likely never see another Irene Morgan.
"Sometimes you wonder if they tore up the mold," she said.
Cooke said highlighting Mrs. Kirkaldy's contribution to the civil rights movement was necessary, although the longtime Gloucester resident often shied away from any special recognition.
"She said anybody would have done what she did but everybody would not have done it," Cooke said. "That was a courageous stance; she took a stand not to stand."
Bacquie Vaughn said her grandmother was an "extrememly humble" individual who went about doing extraordinary things without fanfare.
"She was remarkable outside of this case," Bacquie Vaughn said. "There were elements of her character that were always constant."
For years, she said, the family shared Thanksgiving dinner with countless uncles —— homeless men —— whom her grandmother invited, offered them baths, washed and pressed their clothes or gave them new ones. And then there were the African students whom whe would routinely invite for Sunday dinners. She once rescued a boy from a burning building, another said. She obtained her bachelor's degree from St. John's University at age 68 and her master's from Queen's College at 73 —— this from a woman who previously had had a third-grade education.
But for all those decades, she never said much about that summer day in 1944.
"She really didn't think that she was such an extraordinary person," said her granddaughter, Janine Bacquie in a Richmond Times-Dispatch article. "She felt she had to do what was right. She just wanted to live her life and love her family."
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy is survived by her children, Sherwood Morgan and Brenda Morgan Bacquie; five grandchildren, Aleah Bacquie Vaughn, Shoshanna Bacquie Walden, Janine Bacquie, Deborah Morgan-Barrax and Nechesa Morgan; daughter-in-law Teresa Morgan and son-in-law Gerald Barrax; two sisters, James (Jim) Laforest and Justine Walker; great-grandchildren, other family and friends. Funeral services will be held Aug. 18 at Gloucester High School at 11 a.m.
http://www.afro.com/content/templates/?a=7788&z=1
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy,
the original 'Freedom Rider' dies at 90</font size></center>
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy smiles as she was honored
in 2005
The Afro American
By AFRO Staff
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a belatedly-recognized pioneer in the civil disobedience movement, died Aug. 10 at her daughter's home in Gloucester, Va. She was 90.
"We thank God she had a peaceful passing," said granddaughter Aleah Bacquie Vaughn in an interview with the AFRO. "When she died, she was holding my mother's (Brenda Morgan Bacquie) hand."
More than a decade before Rosa Parks' definitive act of civil disobedience in 1955, Morgan bucked Jim Crow and, with the help of Thurgood Marshall, took her case to the Supreme Court and won.
It was a hot, humid July day in 1944 when Morgan had her meeting with destiny. The 27-year-old widowed mother of two boarded a Greyhound bus in Gloucester, Va., headed north on what was then Route 17, bound for her Baltimore home soon after suffering from a miscarriage. She took a seat next to a young mother with an infant, about midway in the "Colored" section, where she was forced to sit by law. But just a few miles down the road, Morgan and her seatmate were ordered to get up to make room for a White couple boarding the bus. Morgan said no.
"She was sitting where Negroes at that time were supposed to sit. She paid for her seat. She just thought that wasn't right [and] she refused to do it," said her husband Stanley Kirkaldy in a 2005 interview with the AFRO.
After Morgan refused to relinquish her seat, the driver directed the bus to the town of Saluda, stopping outside the jail, where a sheriff's deputy boarded the bus with a warrant for Morgan's arrest. She ripped it up and threw it out the window. That act of bold defiance must have embarrassed the deputy and forced him to act at his own peril.
<center><font size="4">"She said anybody would have done what she did
but everybody would not have done it," Cooke said.
"That was a courageous stance; she took a stand not to stand."</font size></center>
"When I refused to give up my seat, then they said, 'We'll have you arrested.' Well, I said, `That's perfectly all right'; but when he put his hands on me, well, then that's when I kicked him," said Morgan during a television interview in 2001.
That deputy staggered off the bus and another came on and attempted to put his hands on Morgan, but she fought him also. One account claimed the second deputy threatened to hit Morgan with a nightstick, to which she replied, "We'll whip each other."
Famed Richmond, Va. attorney Spottswood Robinson, who was later tapped to be one of the lawyers arguing the Brown Supreme Court case in 1954, represented Morgan. He argued that segregation laws were impractical because they impeded interstate commerce. The "impractical" argument had been used in many of the cases leading up to the Brown decision, but the Middlesex Circuit Court ruled against Morgan and she was ordered to pay a $10 fine.
However, two NAACP lawyers, William Hastie, dean of the Howard University Law School, and Thurgood Marshall, appealed the case on her behalf before the Supreme COurt in 1946.
"..The national business of interstate commerce is not to be disfigured by the disruptive local practices bred of racial notions alien to our national ideal," argued Marshall.
The court agreed with him. On June 3, 1946, they reached a 6-1 decision that struck down Virginia's statute on buses traveling from state to state.
"As no state law can reach beyond its own border, nor bar transportation of passengers across its boundaries, diverse seating requirements for the races in interstate journeys result...It seems clear to us that 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," wrote the Court.
A year after the Morgan decision, the "original freedom riders," eight White and eight Black activists from the newly-formed Congress of Racial Equality, began the two-week "Journey of Reconciliation" to test the new law. "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow," was the soaring anthem —— inspired by Morgan's courageous act of defiance —— sung by the activists as they traveled throughout the South.
When you ride interstate, Jim Crow is dead / Get on the bus, sit anyplace, `Cause Irene Morgan won her case.
Despite being immortalized in song, history books obscured Morgan's contribution for decades, until her birthplace of Gloucester, Va., honored her during the town's 350th anniversary in 2001. Then President Bill Clinton also recognized her that year with the Presidential Citizens Medal —— the second-highest civilian honor in the United States.
Dr. Dorothy Cooke, a retired educator who had a major role in unveiling Mrs. Kirkaldy's legacy to the public eye, said history will likely never see another Irene Morgan.
"Sometimes you wonder if they tore up the mold," she said.
Cooke said highlighting Mrs. Kirkaldy's contribution to the civil rights movement was necessary, although the longtime Gloucester resident often shied away from any special recognition.
"She said anybody would have done what she did but everybody would not have done it," Cooke said. "That was a courageous stance; she took a stand not to stand."
Bacquie Vaughn said her grandmother was an "extrememly humble" individual who went about doing extraordinary things without fanfare.
"She was remarkable outside of this case," Bacquie Vaughn said. "There were elements of her character that were always constant."
For years, she said, the family shared Thanksgiving dinner with countless uncles —— homeless men —— whom her grandmother invited, offered them baths, washed and pressed their clothes or gave them new ones. And then there were the African students whom whe would routinely invite for Sunday dinners. She once rescued a boy from a burning building, another said. She obtained her bachelor's degree from St. John's University at age 68 and her master's from Queen's College at 73 —— this from a woman who previously had had a third-grade education.
But for all those decades, she never said much about that summer day in 1944.
"She really didn't think that she was such an extraordinary person," said her granddaughter, Janine Bacquie in a Richmond Times-Dispatch article. "She felt she had to do what was right. She just wanted to live her life and love her family."
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy is survived by her children, Sherwood Morgan and Brenda Morgan Bacquie; five grandchildren, Aleah Bacquie Vaughn, Shoshanna Bacquie Walden, Janine Bacquie, Deborah Morgan-Barrax and Nechesa Morgan; daughter-in-law Teresa Morgan and son-in-law Gerald Barrax; two sisters, James (Jim) Laforest and Justine Walker; great-grandchildren, other family and friends. Funeral services will be held Aug. 18 at Gloucester High School at 11 a.m.
http://www.afro.com/content/templates/?a=7788&z=1
