She Came Before Rosa Parks - "get on the bus"
It was 150 years ago last week that Jennings, a 24-year-old
schoolteacher setting out to fulfill her duties as organist at the
First Colored Congregational Church on Sixth Street and Second Avenue,
fatefully waited for the bus on the corner of Pearl and Chatham.
Getting around 1854 New York City often involved paying a fare to board
a large horse-drawn carriage...the forerunner to today's behemoth
motorized buses. For black New Yorkers like Jennings, it wasn't that
simple. Pre-Civil War Manhattan may have been home to the nation's
largest African-American population and New York's black residents may
have paid taxes and owned property, but riding the bus with whites,
well, that was a different story. Some buses bore large "Colored
Persons Allowed" signs, while all other buses--those without the
sign--were governed by a rather arbitrary system of passenger choice. [more]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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