Test Rides

Chapter 3 describes a 1947 test of Morgan v. Virginia by two social justice groups. During twenty bus trips in the upper South, pairs of men, one Black and one white, recorded what happened if the Black tester sat in the front of the bus. The 1946 blinding by police of Sergeant Isaac Woodard on a South Carolina bus trip made testing farther south risky. During the test rides, twelve men were arrested, but there was no violence on the buses. Many riders didn’t know of Morgan. Some drivers enforced their bus company’s segregation rules. Others didn’t. Also described in this chapter is progress in other areas that gave Sarah Keys hope her bus trip would go well, such as the desegregated military and her earlier rides on desegregated trains and buses, with one driver even having her sit right behind him. She said she “never had a problem.”