Irene Morgan Kirkaldy

On July 16, 1944, twenty-seven-year-old Irene Morgan refused to yield her seat to a white passenger on a crowded Greyhound bus in Gloucester County, Viginia. Because the bus was bound for Baltimore, Morgan was arrested in violation of Virginia Jim Crow laws that mandated racially segregated seating on public conveyances. On June 3, 1946, nearly a decade before Rosa Parks challenged segregated seating on public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Morgan's favor, striking down Virginia's law in Morgan v. Virginia. Morgan, who later remarried and was known as Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, is photographed here at a 2000 Gloucester County ceremony in her honor.