It was the first transit case the NAACP brought before the Court, and was a full eight years before the landmark segregation case, Brown v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court decided in favor of Kirkaldy in a 6-1 decision, handed down on June 3, 1946, almost two years after the events that sparked it.
http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/015200/015242/html/15242bio.html
In 1961, Freedom Riders rode buses through the South to protest segregation and were met with violence in Alabama that stunned the nation. Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, who was born and reared in Baltimore, lived on Long Island and ran a child-care center in Queens with her second husband, Stanley Kirkaldy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/us/13kirkaldy.html
Irene Morgan's case, which began on a bus in Saluda in 1944 (11 years before Parks), went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1946 that Virginia could not segregate passengers on interstate buses.
http://articles.dailypress.com/keyword/irene-morgan
The facts were as follows: On July 16, 1944, the defendant, Irene Morgan, was a passenger on the Greyhound bus from Hayes Store, in Gloucester, to Baltimore.
http://articles.dailypress.com/keyword/irene-morgan
July 1944: Irene Morgan of Gloucester refused to give up her seat on a Greyhound bus. In the summer of 1936, my grandmother took my older brother and me to New York City to show us the sights. One day, returning to our hotel, the city bus was crowded, and the three of us had to sit separately.
http://articles.dailypress.com/keyword/irene-morgan
With help from NAACP lawyers, including Thurgood Marshall, Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in March 1946. Though narrowly interpreted, the Court's decision struck down state laws requiring segregated seating for interstate bus travel. In 1947 the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sent 16 volunteers on the Journey of Reconciliation to test compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/people/irene-morgan/
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy was a warm and courageous woman. While she never set out to be a hero, her life made a significant impact on the world around her. As her daughter, Brenda Bacquie, once said, She [didn t] see herself as a hero. She saw something that had to be done, and she rushed in, like all heroes. On April 9, 1917, Irene Amos, later known as Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, was born in Baltimore, Maryland. The grandaughter of former slaves, Irene was the sixth of nine children born to Robert and Ethel Amos. The Amos were devout members of the Seventh-Day Adventist church and raised their children in that environment.
http://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/015200/015242/html/15242bio.html
Eleven years before Rosa Parks, Irene Morgan was arrested in Virginia for refusing to give her bus seat to a white passenger. She was convicted on October 18, 1944 at the Middlesex County Circuit Court, but appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court where her conviction was upheld.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/people/irene-morgan/
Long before Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus, a 27-year-old black woman named Irene Morgan faced the same choice after stepping on a Greyhound bus near her mother's home at Hayes Store in Gloucester. I paid my money.
http://articles.dailypress.com/keyword/irene-morgan
MIDDLESEX — Before there was civil rights icon Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Ala., there was Irene Morgan in Middlesex. Morgan was an important predecessor to Parks in the successful fight to overturn segregation laws in the United States.
http://articles.dailypress.com/keyword/irene-morgan
what month did rosa parks and irene morgan go to court
Rosa Parks and Irene Morgan go to court on October 18, 1944. Rosa Parks and Irene Morgan went to the court on October 18, 1944.