Leading the Way

This chapter opens with a brief introductory overview of the 1952 arrest in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, of Sarah Keys, age twenty-three, wearing her Women’s Army Corps uniform. Arrested for not moving to the back of a bus, she set out to win justice, helped by her father and lawyer Dovey Johnson Roundtree, and was later honored in 2020 with a monument in Roanoke Rapids. By then, she was known by her married name, Sarah Keys Evans. This chapter explains the book’s structure which places the life story of this little-known North Carolina hero’s quest for justice within the context of decades of protests and legal efforts against transportation segregation made by many others (also often little-known), starting in the early nineteenth century, when segregation gained the name “Jim Crow.” The chapter ends by noting that victory was finally won, thanks to Sarah Keys and many others.