JUSTICE

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PASSINGS: FORERUNNER OF ROSA PARKS

AP - Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a black woman whose refusal to give up her
bus seat to white passengers led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court
decision more than a decade before Rosa Parks gained recognition for
doing the same, has died at 90. . . Kirkaldy, born Irene Morgan in
Baltimore in 1917, was arrested in 1944 for refusing to give up her seat
on a Greyhound bus heading from Gloucester to Baltimore, and for
resisting arrest. Her case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by an
NAACP lawyer named Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first black
justice on the high court. The Supreme Court held in June 1946 that
Virginia law requiring the races to be separated on interstate buses -
even making passengers change seats during their journey to maintain
separation if the number of passengers changed - was an invalid
interference in interstate commerce. At the time, the case received
little attention, and not all bus companies complied with the ruling at
first, but it paved the way for civil rights victories to come,
including Parks' famous stand on a local bus in Montgomery, Ala., in
1955.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070813/ap_on_re_us/obit_kirkaldy

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