Elizabeth Jennings -- refused to give up her seat on a bus 100 yrs before Ms. Parks. As soon as the two black women got on, the conductor balked. Get off, he insisted. Jennings declined. Finally he told the women they could ride, but that if any white passengers objected, you shall go out ... or Ill put you out. I told him, Jennings wrote shortly after the incident, that I was a respectable person, born and raised in New York, did not know where he was born ... and that he was a good for nothing impudent fellow for insulting decent persons while on their way to church. The 8 or 10 white passengers must have stared. Replying that he was from Ireland, the conductor tried to haul Jennings from the car. She resisted ferociously, clinging first to a window frame, then to the conductors own coat. You shall sweat for this, he vowed. Driving on, with Jenningss companion left at the curb, he soon spotted backup in the figure of a police officer, who boarded the car and thrust Jennings, her bonnet smashed and her dress soiled, to the sidewalk. But, like Mrs. Parks a century later, Elizabeth Jennings had her own backup. She had grown up among a small cadre of black abolitionist ministers, journalists, educators and businessmen who stood up for their community as whites harshly reasserted the color line in the decades after New York had abolished slavery in 1827. Her father, Thomas L. Jennings, was a prominent tailor who helped found both a society that provided benefits for black people and the Abyssinian Baptist Church, which later moved to Harlem. The daughter had worked in black schools co-founded by a conductor of the Underground Railroad. Her own church - First Colored American - was a place of learning and political rebellion, where, one evening in 1854, addresses on God and the Bible alternated with talks on The Duty of Colored People Towards the Overthrow of American Slavery and Elevation of the African Race. powerfulblackstories/black-history/100-yrs-before-ms-parks/
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 16:38:43 +0000
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