Black Veteran's Bus Desegregation Case Paved Way for Civil Rights Victories

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In 1952, 23-year-old Army private Sarah Keys (later Sarah Keys Evans) was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after refusing to give up her seat to a white Marine on an interstate bus trip from New Jersey to North Carolina. Over the next three years, with the support of her father and attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree, Keys Evans fought the case all the way to the Interstate Commerce Commission, which in 1955 ruled that segregation on interstate buses was unconstitutional - a pivotal victory that came just days before Rosa Parks' famous refusal to give up her seat on an Alabama city bus.

Why it matters

Keys Evans' case marked the first time an executive branch institution outside the military rejected the 'separate but equal' doctrine established by the Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. While the federal government was slow to enforce the ICC's ruling, Keys Evans' victory paved the way for the success of the Montgomery bus boycott and the broader Civil Rights Movement in the years that followed.

The details

In the summer of 1952, 23-year-old Sarah Keys, a private first class in the Women's Army Corps, was making her first trip home from her Army hospital job in Trenton, New Jersey, to North Carolina. Around midnight, she was ordered to give up her seat to a white Marine, and when she refused, she was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. With the support of her father and trailblazing Black attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree, Keys brought the case to the Interstate Commerce Commission, which initially ruled against her. But after the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Keys' legal team appealed, and in 1955 the ICC ruled in her favor, marking the first time an executive branch institution outside the military rejected the 'separate but equal' doctrine.

• In the summer of 1952, Keys was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to give up her seat to a white Marine on an interstate bus trip.
• In 1955, just days before Rosa Parks' famous bus incident, the Interstate Commerce Commission ruled in Keys' favor, declaring segregation on interstate buses unconstitutional.

What they’re saying

What’s next

The federal government took several more years to fully enforce the ICC's 1955 ruling against segregation on interstate buses, with the Freedom Rides of 1961 finally spurring Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to order enforcement.