Overview

As a member of the integrated Women’s Army Corps, Private First Class Sarah Keys served her country as a receptionist at Fort Dix, New Jersey. When she boarded a bus home to North Carolina in 1952, she never expected to be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for refusing to move to the rear so a white Marine could take her seat. Her landmark 1955 Civil Rights victory, “Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company” not only desegregated interstate bus travel, it also provided the legal precedent needed during the 1961 Freedom Rides to pressure the Interstate Commerce Commission to properly enforce its Sarah Keys ruling. Often overlooked in many accounts of the Civil Rights era, her arrest and victory are crucial milestones in the fight against segregation. Riding into History draws on years of personal conversations with Sarah Keys Evans as well as extensive research to present a biography of this hero and her role in the struggle for civil rights alongside the long history of many other Black Americans, especially women, who protested racial segregation in interstate travel.

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9781478029717

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Reviews

“It took many heroes to overturn legally enforced racial segregation. Students learn about Rosa Parks, but they also should learn about Private First-Class Sarah Keys.”—Alan J. Singer, author of Class-Conscious Coal Miners: The Emergence of a Working-Class Movement in Central Pennsylvania “This beautifully rendered, long-overlooked chapter of civil rights history deserves to be widely known. Nathan and Sarah Keys Evans bring Sarah’s story to life with clarity and reverence, reminding us that Black women’s courage has always sat at the center of the American democratic project. In tracing the case that laid the legal groundwork for the Freedom Rides, they show how one woman’s refusal to move quite literally moved the nation.”—Blair LM Kelley, author of Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class "". . . Evans was an accidental activist who did not intend to challenge racism. Nonetheless, she knew that she needed to act when her rights and dignity were being trampled. It’s an amazing story. What’s more, her example is a potent reminder that one person’s actions can actually change the world.""—Eleanor J. Bader The Turned Page>

“It took many heroes to overturn legally enforced racial segregation. Students learn about Rosa Parks, but they also should learn about Private First-Class Sarah Keys.”—Alan J. Singer, author of, Class-Conscious Coal Miners: The Emergence of a Working-Class Movement in Central Pennsylvania

Author Information

Amy Nathan is the author of more than fifteen books, including Together: An Inspiring Response to the “Separate-but-Equal” Supreme Court Decision that Divided America, Making Time for Making Music, Round and Round Together, and A Ride to Remember: A Civil Rights Story. She is a native of Baltimore who now lives outside New York City.

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