More than a century before Rosa Parks’ actions sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama, New York teacher and church organist Elizabeth Jennings Graham had already helped to desegregate public transportation in New York City when she denied requests to leave a streetcar and was forcibly removed.
With the help of her father, successful businessman Thomas Jennings, and other high-ranking African-Americans, Graham and the 1854 incident became the catalyst for ending racial discrimination on the streetcars, which were horse-drawn, privately run and mostly segregated at the time.
Graham sued the private Brooklyn-based Third Avenue Railroad Company, the conductor and the driver — and won in 1855, thanks to a novice attorney named Chester A. Arthur, who went on to become the 21st President in 1881. After several similar challenges, all public transportation was desegregated in New York by 1865.
APOLLO THEATHER BARRED BLACKS WHEN IT OPENED IN 1914
Graham’s father — a lower Manhattan tailor, activist and inventor — was the first African-American to receive a U.S. patent. His invention was a clothes cleaning process called “dry scouring,” the chemical removal of stains that was an early form of dry cleaning.