Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company
Encyclopedia
Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, 64 MCC 769 (1955) is a landmark civil rights
case in the United States
in which the Interstate Commerce Commission
, in response to a bus segregation complaint filed in 1953 by a Women's Army Corps
(WAC) private named Sarah Louise Keys, broke with its historic adherence to the Plessy v. Ferguson
separate but equal
doctrine and interpreted the non-discrimination language of the Interstate Commerce Act as banning the segregation
of black passengers in buses traveling across state lines.
The case was argued on the eve of the explosion of the civil rights protest movement by Washington D.C. lawyer Julius Winfield Robertson and his partner Dovey Johnson Roundtree
, a former WAC whose experience with Jim Crow bus travel during her World War II
Army recruiting days caused her to take on the Sarah Keys case as a personal mission. Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, along with its companion train desegregation case, NAACP v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Company, 298 ICC 355 (1955), represents a milestone in the legal battle for civil rights
. The November 1955 ruling, publicly announced six days before Rosa Parks
' historic defiance of state Jim Crow laws
on Montgomery buses, applied the United States Supreme Court's logic in Brown v. Board of Education
(347 US 483 (1954) for the first time to the field of interstate transportation, and closed the legal loophole that private bus companies had long exploited to impose their own Jim Crow regulations on black interstate travelers. Keys v. Carolina Coach was the only explicit rejection ever made by either a court or a federal administrative body of the Plessy v. Ferguson
doctrine (Plessy, 163 US 537 (1896)) in the field of bus travel across state lines. The ruling made legal history both at the time of its issuance and again in 1961, when Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
invoked it in his successful battle to end Jim Crow travel during the Freedom Riders' campaign.
town of Roanoke Rapids shortly after midnight on August 1, 1952, when African American
WAC private Sarah Keys was forced by a local bus driver to yield her seat in the front of the vehicle to a white Marine as she traveled homeward on furlough. At the time of the incident, Jim Crow laws
entirely governed Southern bus travel, despite a 1946 Supreme Court ruling meant to put an end to the practice. That decision, Morgan v. Virginia (328 US 373 (1946)), had declared state Jim Crow laws
inoperative on interstate buses on the basis that the imposition of widely varying statutes on black passengers moving across state lines generated multiple seat changes and thus created the kind of disorder and inconsistency forbidden by the commerce clause
of the U.S. Constitution. Southern carriers managed to dodge the Morgan decision, however, by passing segregation rules of their own, and those rules remained outside the purview of state and federal courts because they pertained to private businesses. In addition, the federal agency charged with regulating the carriers, the Interstate Commerce Commission
, had historically interpreted the Interstate Commerce Act's discrimination ban as permitting separate accommodations for the races so long as they were equal. The ICC's separate but equal
policy, upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in a 1950 railway dining car segregation case known as Henderson v. United States
(399 US 816 (1950)), thus remained the norm in public transportation.
When Sarah Keys departed her WAC post in Fort Dix, New Jersey
on the evening of July 31, 1952 for her home in the town of Washington, North Carolina
, she boarded an integrated bus and transferred without incident in Washington, D.C.
to a Carolina Trailways vehicle, taking the fifth seat from the front in the white section. When the bus pulled into the town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina
, however, a new driver took the wheel and demanded that she comply with the carrier's Jim Crow regulation by moving to the so-called "colored section" in the back of the bus so that a white Marine could occupy her seat. Keys refused to move, whereupon the driver emptied the bus, directed the other passengers to another vehicle, and barred Keys from boarding it. An altercation ensued and Keys was arrested, charged with disorderly conduct, jailed incommunicado overnight, then convicted of the disorderly conduct charge and fined $25. Unwilling to accept the verdict of the North Carolina lower court sustaining the charge, Keys and her father brought the matter to the attention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) office in Washington, D.C., headed by Howard University
Law School professor Frank D. Reeves. Reeves referred the Sarah Keys matter to a former law student named Dovey Johnson Roundtree
, whose World War II
service in the Women's Army Corps
(WAC) he believed would make her an ideal advocate for Sarah Keys. Roundtree herself, as a recruiter for the WAC in the Deep South, had been evicted from a Miami, Florida
bus in a 1943 incident that almost exactly paralleled Sarah Keys' experience. With her law partner and mentor Julius Winfield Robertson, she undertook the case, and the two immediately filed a complaint against both the Northern carrier which had transported Keys to Washington, D.C., and the Southern carrier which had actually perpetrated the alleged wrong, Carolina Trailways. Though Robertson and Roundtree were but a year at the bar in the fall of 1952 when they undertook to represent Sarah Keys, they had been trained at Howard University
Law School by such renowned civil rights lawyers as Thurgood Marshall
, James Madison Nabrit, Jr., and George E.C. Hayes, and they were deeply involved in the movement to dismantle segregation in the courts.
was hearing oral arguments in the landmark school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education
. When the US District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the Keys complaint on February 23, 1953 on jurisdictional grounds, Roundtree and Robertson elected to bring their case before the Interstate Commerce Commission
, which they believed might be persuaded to re-evaluate its traditional interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Act, in the same way that the Supreme Court was then re-evaluating its interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment
. On September 1, 1953, two months before Thurgood Marshall
and his legal team made the second round of oral arguments in Brown before the Supreme Court asserting that the Fourteenth Amendment
's "equal protection" clause prohibited segregation, Sarah Keys became the first black petitioner to bring a complaint before the Commission on a Jim Crow bus matter.
When the Supreme Court handed down its epochal ruling on May 17, 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education
, the ICC initially chose to ignore it. In a September 30, 1954 ruling, ICC Commissioner Isadore Freidson stated that Brown had no relevance to the conduct of business by a private bus carrier. Citing Plessy v. Ferguson
as well as nineteenth-century ICC decisions handed down prior to Plessy, and others which the Supreme Court had later overturned, Freidson argued that the non-discrimination language of the Interstate Commerce Act did not prohibit segregation. Roundtree and Robertson filed exceptions to Freidson's ruling in which they invoked both the commerce clause
of the US Constitution and the Supreme Court's reasoning in Brown and applied it explicitly to the area of transportation.
On November 7, 1955, in a historic ruling, the Commission condemned 'separate but equal' in the field where it had begun—public transportation. In the Keys case, and in the NAACP's companion train case attacking segregation on railroads and in terminal waiting rooms, NAACP v. St. Louis-Santa Fe Railway Company, the ICC ruled that the Interstate Commerce Act prohibited segregation itself. The Keys decision, made public just one week before Rosa Parks
' defiance of the bus segregation laws of the city of Montgomery, banned segregation itself as an assault upon the personhood of black travelers, and held in part:
"We conclude that the assignment of seats on interstate buses, so designated as to imply the inherent inferiority of a traveler solely because of race or color, must be regarded as subjecting the traveler to unjust discrimination, and undue and unreasonable prejudice and disadvantage...We find that the practice of defendant requiring that Negro interstate passengers occupy space or seats in specified portions of its buses, subjects such passengers to unjust discrimination, and undue and unreasonable prejudice and disadvantage, in violation of Section 216 (d) of the Interstate Commerce Act and is therefore unlawful."
Democrat J. Monroe Johnson. In his position as Chairman of the Commission, Johnson consistently failed to enforce the Keys ruling, and it was not until the summer of 1961, when the violence resulting from the Freedom Riders' campaign prompted Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
to take action, that the impact of the Keys case was felt.
Impelled by the protests of civil rights leaders and the weight of international outrage at the brutality perpetrated on the Freedom Riders Kennedy took the unusual legal step of issuing a petition to the Interstate Commerce Commission
on May 29, 1961, in which he called upon them to implement their own rulings. Citing the Keys and NAACP train case, along with the Supreme Court's 1960 Boynton v. Virginia
ruling (364 US 454 (1960)) prohibiting segregation in terminal waiting rooms, restaurants and restrooms, the Attorney General called upon the ICC to issue specific regulations banning Jim Crow in interstate travel, and to take immediate steps to enforce those regulations.
's city bus laws by Rosa Parks
and the resultant Montgomery Bus Boycott
. Parks' action assumed an importance far beyond the level of a municipal incident, giving rise to a Supreme Court decision banning segregation in travel within the individual states (Gayle v. Browder, 352 US 903
(1956)) and igniting the civil rights campaign which thrust the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. onto the national stage and paved the way for further reforms. The protest movement King led created an environment in which Keys and other desegregation rulings could be implemented. Keys thus represents one critical piece in the complex and multi-faceted fight for civil rights, in which the legal and the activist streams sustained each other and in combination precipitated the dismantling of Jim Crow.
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
case in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in which the Interstate Commerce Commission
Interstate Commerce Commission
The Interstate Commerce Commission was a regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including...
, in response to a bus segregation complaint filed in 1953 by a Women's Army Corps
Women's Army Corps
The Women's Army Corps was the women's branch of the US Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps on 15 May 1942 by Public Law 554, and converted to full status as the WAC in 1943...
(WAC) private named Sarah Louise Keys, broke with its historic adherence to the Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 , is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses , under the doctrine of "separate but equal".The decision was handed...
separate but equal
Separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law that justified systems of segregation. Under this doctrine, services, facilities and public accommodations were allowed to be separated by race, on the condition that the quality of each group's public facilities was to...
doctrine and interpreted the non-discrimination language of the Interstate Commerce Act as banning the segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
of black passengers in buses traveling across state lines.
The case was argued on the eve of the explosion of the civil rights protest movement by Washington D.C. lawyer Julius Winfield Robertson and his partner Dovey Johnson Roundtree
Dovey Johnson Roundtree
Dovey Johnson Roundtree is an African American civil rights activist, ordained minister, and attorney. Her 1955 victory before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the first bus desegregation case to be brought before the ICC resulted in the only explicit repudiation of the separate but equal...
, a former WAC whose experience with Jim Crow bus travel during her World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Army recruiting days caused her to take on the Sarah Keys case as a personal mission. Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, along with its companion train desegregation case, NAACP v. St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Company, 298 ICC 355 (1955), represents a milestone in the legal battle for civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
. The November 1955 ruling, publicly announced six days before Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....
' historic defiance of state Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
on Montgomery buses, applied the United States Supreme Court's logic in Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
(347 US 483 (1954) for the first time to the field of interstate transportation, and closed the legal loophole that private bus companies had long exploited to impose their own Jim Crow regulations on black interstate travelers. Keys v. Carolina Coach was the only explicit rejection ever made by either a court or a federal administrative body of the Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 , is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses , under the doctrine of "separate but equal".The decision was handed...
doctrine (Plessy, 163 US 537 (1896)) in the field of bus travel across state lines. The ruling made legal history both at the time of its issuance and again in 1961, when Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
invoked it in his successful battle to end Jim Crow travel during the Freedom Riders' campaign.
Background
The Keys case originated in an incident that occurred at a bus station in the tiny North CarolinaNorth Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
town of Roanoke Rapids shortly after midnight on August 1, 1952, when African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
WAC private Sarah Keys was forced by a local bus driver to yield her seat in the front of the vehicle to a white Marine as she traveled homeward on furlough. At the time of the incident, Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
entirely governed Southern bus travel, despite a 1946 Supreme Court ruling meant to put an end to the practice. That decision, Morgan v. Virginia (328 US 373 (1946)), had declared state Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
inoperative on interstate buses on the basis that the imposition of widely varying statutes on black passengers moving across state lines generated multiple seat changes and thus created the kind of disorder and inconsistency forbidden by the commerce clause
Commerce Clause
The Commerce Clause is an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution . The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Courts and commentators have tended to...
of the U.S. Constitution. Southern carriers managed to dodge the Morgan decision, however, by passing segregation rules of their own, and those rules remained outside the purview of state and federal courts because they pertained to private businesses. In addition, the federal agency charged with regulating the carriers, the Interstate Commerce Commission
Interstate Commerce Commission
The Interstate Commerce Commission was a regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including...
, had historically interpreted the Interstate Commerce Act's discrimination ban as permitting separate accommodations for the races so long as they were equal. The ICC's separate but equal
Separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law that justified systems of segregation. Under this doctrine, services, facilities and public accommodations were allowed to be separated by race, on the condition that the quality of each group's public facilities was to...
policy, upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in a 1950 railway dining car segregation case known as Henderson v. United States
Henderson v. United States
Henderson v. United States, 339 U.S. 816 , was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States that abolished segregation in railroad dining cars.-The decision:On May 17, 1942, Elmer W...
(399 US 816 (1950)), thus remained the norm in public transportation.
When Sarah Keys departed her WAC post in Fort Dix, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
on the evening of July 31, 1952 for her home in the town of Washington, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
, she boarded an integrated bus and transferred without incident in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
to a Carolina Trailways vehicle, taking the fifth seat from the front in the white section. When the bus pulled into the town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
, however, a new driver took the wheel and demanded that she comply with the carrier's Jim Crow regulation by moving to the so-called "colored section" in the back of the bus so that a white Marine could occupy her seat. Keys refused to move, whereupon the driver emptied the bus, directed the other passengers to another vehicle, and barred Keys from boarding it. An altercation ensued and Keys was arrested, charged with disorderly conduct, jailed incommunicado overnight, then convicted of the disorderly conduct charge and fined $25. Unwilling to accept the verdict of the North Carolina lower court sustaining the charge, Keys and her father brought the matter to the attention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
(NAACP) office in Washington, D.C., headed by Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
Law School professor Frank D. Reeves. Reeves referred the Sarah Keys matter to a former law student named Dovey Johnson Roundtree
Dovey Johnson Roundtree
Dovey Johnson Roundtree is an African American civil rights activist, ordained minister, and attorney. Her 1955 victory before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the first bus desegregation case to be brought before the ICC resulted in the only explicit repudiation of the separate but equal...
, whose World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
service in the Women's Army Corps
Women's Army Corps
The Women's Army Corps was the women's branch of the US Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps on 15 May 1942 by Public Law 554, and converted to full status as the WAC in 1943...
(WAC) he believed would make her an ideal advocate for Sarah Keys. Roundtree herself, as a recruiter for the WAC in the Deep South, had been evicted from a Miami, Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
bus in a 1943 incident that almost exactly paralleled Sarah Keys' experience. With her law partner and mentor Julius Winfield Robertson, she undertook the case, and the two immediately filed a complaint against both the Northern carrier which had transported Keys to Washington, D.C., and the Southern carrier which had actually perpetrated the alleged wrong, Carolina Trailways. Though Robertson and Roundtree were but a year at the bar in the fall of 1952 when they undertook to represent Sarah Keys, they had been trained at Howard University
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
Law School by such renowned civil rights lawyers as Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
, James Madison Nabrit, Jr., and George E.C. Hayes, and they were deeply involved in the movement to dismantle segregation in the courts.
Three-year battle
The match of client Sarah Keys with the young firm of Robertson and Roundtree proved fortuitous, as did the timing of the case, which unfolded during the same two-year period that the Supreme Court of the United StatesSupreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
was hearing oral arguments in the landmark school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
. When the US District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the Keys complaint on February 23, 1953 on jurisdictional grounds, Roundtree and Robertson elected to bring their case before the Interstate Commerce Commission
Interstate Commerce Commission
The Interstate Commerce Commission was a regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including...
, which they believed might be persuaded to re-evaluate its traditional interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Act, in the same way that the Supreme Court was then re-evaluating its interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
. On September 1, 1953, two months before Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
and his legal team made the second round of oral arguments in Brown before the Supreme Court asserting that the Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
's "equal protection" clause prohibited segregation, Sarah Keys became the first black petitioner to bring a complaint before the Commission on a Jim Crow bus matter.
When the Supreme Court handed down its epochal ruling on May 17, 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
, the ICC initially chose to ignore it. In a September 30, 1954 ruling, ICC Commissioner Isadore Freidson stated that Brown had no relevance to the conduct of business by a private bus carrier. Citing Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 , is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses , under the doctrine of "separate but equal".The decision was handed...
as well as nineteenth-century ICC decisions handed down prior to Plessy, and others which the Supreme Court had later overturned, Freidson argued that the non-discrimination language of the Interstate Commerce Act did not prohibit segregation. Roundtree and Robertson filed exceptions to Freidson's ruling in which they invoked both the commerce clause
Commerce Clause
The Commerce Clause is an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution . The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Courts and commentators have tended to...
of the US Constitution and the Supreme Court's reasoning in Brown and applied it explicitly to the area of transportation.
On November 7, 1955, in a historic ruling, the Commission condemned 'separate but equal' in the field where it had begun—public transportation. In the Keys case, and in the NAACP's companion train case attacking segregation on railroads and in terminal waiting rooms, NAACP v. St. Louis-Santa Fe Railway Company, the ICC ruled that the Interstate Commerce Act prohibited segregation itself. The Keys decision, made public just one week before Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....
' defiance of the bus segregation laws of the city of Montgomery, banned segregation itself as an assault upon the personhood of black travelers, and held in part:
"We conclude that the assignment of seats on interstate buses, so designated as to imply the inherent inferiority of a traveler solely because of race or color, must be regarded as subjecting the traveler to unjust discrimination, and undue and unreasonable prejudice and disadvantage...We find that the practice of defendant requiring that Negro interstate passengers occupy space or seats in specified portions of its buses, subjects such passengers to unjust discrimination, and undue and unreasonable prejudice and disadvantage, in violation of Section 216 (d) of the Interstate Commerce Act and is therefore unlawful."
Enforcement
Hailed by the press as a "symbol of a movement that cannot be held back," the Keys case marked a turning point in the legal battle against segregation, and a major departure from the ICC's history in racial matters. In the short term, however, it lay dormant, its intent thwarted by the one ICC commissioner who had dissented from the majority opinion, South CarolinaSouth Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
Democrat J. Monroe Johnson. In his position as Chairman of the Commission, Johnson consistently failed to enforce the Keys ruling, and it was not until the summer of 1961, when the violence resulting from the Freedom Riders' campaign prompted Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
to take action, that the impact of the Keys case was felt.
Impelled by the protests of civil rights leaders and the weight of international outrage at the brutality perpetrated on the Freedom Riders Kennedy took the unusual legal step of issuing a petition to the Interstate Commerce Commission
Interstate Commerce Commission
The Interstate Commerce Commission was a regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including...
on May 29, 1961, in which he called upon them to implement their own rulings. Citing the Keys and NAACP train case, along with the Supreme Court's 1960 Boynton v. Virginia
Boynton v. Virginia
Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The case overturned a judgment convicting an African American law student for trespassing by being in a restaurant in a bus terminal which was "whites only." It held that racial segregation in public...
ruling (364 US 454 (1960)) prohibiting segregation in terminal waiting rooms, restaurants and restrooms, the Attorney General called upon the ICC to issue specific regulations banning Jim Crow in interstate travel, and to take immediate steps to enforce those regulations.
Historical perspective
A major breakthrough in the legal battle for civil rights, Keys v. Carolina Coach Company has generally been eclipsed in historical accounts of the movement by the events which followed it, notably the defiance of Montgomery, AlabamaAlabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
's city bus laws by Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....
and the resultant Montgomery Bus Boycott
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Many important figures in the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott,...
. Parks' action assumed an importance far beyond the level of a municipal incident, giving rise to a Supreme Court decision banning segregation in travel within the individual states (Gayle v. Browder, 352 US 903
Case citation
Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...
(1956)) and igniting the civil rights campaign which thrust the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. onto the national stage and paved the way for further reforms. The protest movement King led created an environment in which Keys and other desegregation rulings could be implemented. Keys thus represents one critical piece in the complex and multi-faceted fight for civil rights, in which the legal and the activist streams sustained each other and in combination precipitated the dismantling of Jim Crow.
Source materials
- "Balky Dixie Keeps Jim Crow in States," The New York Post, November 27, 1955.
- Barnes, Catherine A. "A Legal Breakthrough," pp. 86–107, in Journey from Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit, Columbia University PressColumbia University PressColumbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by James D. Jordan and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, social work, sociology,...
, New York, NY 1983. - Brantley, Alice. "A Definite and Imperative Need for Legislation Against Discrimination," Amending Interstate Commerce Act (Segregation of Passengers) Hearings before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, United States House of RepresentativesUnited States House of RepresentativesThe United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
, 83rd Congress, 2nd Session, May 12-14, 1954, Washington, DC. - "Challenging the System: Two Army Women Fight for Equality," http://www.womensmemorial.org/Education/BHMSys.html.
- "Civil Rights in America: Racial Desegregation in Public Accommodations," National Park ServiceNational Park ServiceThe National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...
, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2004, page 119. http://www.nps.gov/nhl/themes/Pub%20Accom.pdf - Discrimination in Operation of Interstate Motor Carriers of Passengers, 86 MCC 743 (1961).
- Dixon, Robert G., Jr. "Civil Rights in Transportation and the ICC," George Washington Law Review, Vol. 31 (1962-1963), pp. 211–213.
- Escobar, Gabriel. "Saluting Military Pioneers, Past and Present," Washington Post, December 8, 1997.
- Exceptions to Proposed Report and Order," Robertson and Roundtree to the Interstate Commerce Commission in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company,Docket No. MC-C-1564, in Dept. of Justice Antitrust Division, DOJ File 144-54-56.
- "Excerpts from Bus Petition to ICC," New York Times, May 29, 1961.
- Greenberg, Milton. "Dovey Roundtree," in The GI Bill: The Law that Changed America,Lickle Publishing, Inc., New York, 1997, p. 103.
- Huston, Luther A. "I.C.C. Orders End of Segregation on Trains, Buses; Deadline Jan. 10; Ruling Follows High Court Edict -- Legal Test Seen," New York Times, November 25, 1955.
- "ICC Aide Calls Travel Segregation Legal," Associated Press in the Washington Post, October 1, 1954
- "ICC Outlaws Travel Bias," The Pittsburgh Courier, December 3, 1955.
- "ICC Ruling: End of an Era," The Pittsburgh Courier, December 10, 1955.
- "ICC To Outlaw Jim Crow In Interstate Travel," JET, December 2, 1954.
- "ICC Examiner's Ruling Favors Jimcrow Bias," Daily Worker, September 30, 1954, page 3.
- Lerner, Max. "We Ride Together," New York PostNew York PostThe New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
, November 28, 1955. - McCabe, Katie, "She Had a Dream," WashingtonianWashingtonian (magazine)Washingtonian is a monthly magazine distributed in the Washington, DC area since 1965. The magazine describes itself as "the magazine Washington lives by." The magazine's core focuses are local feature journalism, guide book-style articles, and real estate advice.-Editorial Content:Washingtonian...
Magazine, March 2002. - McCabe, Katie and Dovey Johnson Roundtree, Justice Older than the Law: the Life of Dovey Johnson Roundtree, University Press of Mississippi, 2009.
- NAACP v. Saint Louis-San Francisco Railway Company 298 ICC 335 (1955).
- Palmore, Joseph R. "The Not-So-Strange Career of Interstate Jim Crow: Race, Transportation, and the Dormant Commerce ClauseCommerce ClauseThe Commerce Clause is an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution . The clause states that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." Courts and commentators have tended to...
, 1878-1946," Virginia Law Review, Vol. 83, No. 8 (Nov. 1997), page 1816. - "Petition for Rule Making Filed by Attorney General on Behalf of the United States," ICC Docket No. MC-C-3358, May 29, 1961.
- "Report and Order Recommended by Isadore Freidson, Examiner," Interstate Commerce Commission in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, Docket No. MC-C-1564, in Dept. of Justice Antitrust Division, DOJ file 144-54-56.
- Richardson, Clem, "Like Parks, She Wouldn't Budge," New York Daily NewsNew York Daily NewsThe Daily News of New York City is the fourth most widely circulated daily newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 605,677, as of November 1, 2011....
, December 2, 2005. - Risher, Charles A. "Keys v. Carolina Coach Company," Encyclopedia of African-American Civil Rights: From Emancipation to the Present, edited by Charles D. Lowery and John F. Marszalek, Greenwood Press, New York, NY 1992, page 298. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&docId=71235889
- Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company 64 MCC 769 (1955)
- "Segregation: Anybody's Seats," NewsweekNewsweekNewsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, December 5, 1955. - "A Tribute to Sarah Keys Evans," Speech of Hon. Edolphus Towns (NY) in the US House of Representatives, The Congressional Record, Thursday, March 9, 2006.
- Warner, James E. "Segregation's End on Buses, Trains Ordered by the I.C.C.," The New York Herald Tribune, November 25, 1955.
- "Whistling in the Dark," The Afro-American (Baltimore), December 10, 1955.
- "Winner Acclaims Decision by I.C.C.; Negro Woman in Bus Case Voices Happiness Here at Segregation Ban," New York Times, November 27, 1955.