Closing The Circle

Closing The Circle. The story of Mrs. Sarah Louise Keys Evans. , Sarah Louise Keys was born in 1929 in Clark's Neck, North Carolina, one of seven children born to David and Vivian Keys. Keys enlisted in the Women's Army Corp (WAC) in 1951 and upon completion of Basic Training at Fort Lee, Virginia, her permanent assignment was as a receptionist at the Army base hospital, Fort Dix, New Jersey. , After becoming eligible for leave on August 1, 1952, dressed in full military uniform, Keys boarded an interstate bus in Trenton, New Jersey and headed home to Washington, NC. When the Carolina Coach Company bus arrived in Roanoke Rapids, NC around midnight, a new driver ordered Keys to move to the back of the bus and give her seat to a white marine who boarded the bus at that time. Sarah was aware of her rights under the 1946 Supreme Court case Morgan v. Virginia, which ruled that passenger segregation was illegal on interstate travel and African Americans who started their ride in the north could remain in whatever seat midway they had taken at the beginning of the trip. Keys had taken a seat midway on the bus and did not move, but unfortunately Southern carriers had been operating under legal loopholes. , Keys was arrested by the Roanoke Rapids Police Department and placed in the Roanoke Rapids jail for 13 hours, was fined $25.00 upon her release and placed on a Carolina Coach bus the next day. She was ordered to stay in her seat until she reached her destination. , At the encouragement of her father, Keys returned to Roanoke Rapids to file a lawsuit against the Carolina Coach Company. Keys’ legal battle was seminal in the fight for equal rights. The resulting breakthrough civil rights case, Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (1955), was the first occurrence in which the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) broke with the history of adherence to the Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" doctrine, closing this loophole. In 1955 the ICC finally decided that the Supreme Court ruling in 1946 should be applied to private bus companies as well as public transportation and ruled in favor of Keys, forbidding segregation on interstate transportation. Keys' ruling was issued just weeks before Rosa Parks took her seat at the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama., While the story of Sarah Louise Keys Evans has been eclipsed by the events in Montgomery, her activism was a necessary step and key success in ultimately dismantling Jim Crow transportation in the south. This project serves as a symbolic way of closing the circle that began in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina in 1952 by honoring the compelling and unknown story of a Trailblazer for Justice -- Sarah Louise Keys Evans!