Nearly everyone in America has heard of Rosa Parks and her defiant refusal to give up her seat and move to the “black section” at the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955. But few know the importance of an event that happened in Columbia, S.C., on June 22, 1954.
On that day, 66 years ago this past Monday, a 20-year-old black woman from Eastover, S.C., made history by just sitting down. Her name was Sarah Mae Flemming. She was trying to get home after another day of work. But, by just sitting down in what was then the “whites-only,” section of an SCE& G bus, Ms. Flemming unknowingly helped start a revolution.
She was ordered to move by a bus driver, who at this time in American history was actually “deputized” to enforce segregation laws that governed public transportation. Ms. Flemming did move, but because she was attempting to exit the bus through the door reserved for “whites only,” the bus driver proceeded to physically hit and then eject her from the bus on the corner of Washington and Main Streets in downtown Columbia.
This moment in history was a catalyst for change. With the help of the NAACP, Ms. Flemming sued and won. Her Civil Rights, as an American, had been violated. In the summer of 1955, a little over a year after Ms. Flemming had been assaulted and almost six months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the desegregation mandates in the Brown v Board of Education ruling also applied to public transportation.
Thanks to a seemingly innocuous act by an ordinary person wanting to go home after work, a precedent had been set. And when at long last the United States Supreme Court declared segregation in public transportation unconstitutional, the civil rights lawsuit brought by Ms. Flemming a year earlier was cited. That case brought an end to the Montgomery Bus Boycott made famous by civil rights activists Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.
A young but brave black woman did something in a time when being black and brave could get you arrested, beaten, or worse. Sarah Mae Flemming is not a name that most people know, but should.
by Perry McLeod
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