Virginia Department of Historic Resources Virginia Department of Historic Resources
This marker will be dedicated at its location at 2425 Hayes Road in Gloucester County.
Speakers at the event will include Robin Washington, producer of the 1995 PBS documentary “You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow”; Morgan’s granddaughter, Shoshanna Bacquie Walden; and Jim Hare, of the Department of Historic Resources. Other participants will be Morgan’s daughter, Brenda M. Bacquie, and niece, Cleo Warren; Ben Borden, a longtime resident of Hayes; Anne Dyal and Rachel Burnette, both of the Gloucester Historical Committee, and Dr. Dorothy C. Cooke, a sponsor of the marker, and the Reverend Warren Ward, a nephew of Morgan’s and pastor of First Baptist Church, Ordinary. Jadyn Forrest will perform a musical contribution.
Here is the text of the marker:
The Irene Morgan Story Begins
On this site stood the Hayes Store Post Office, where Irene Morgan boarded a Greyhound bus on 16 July 1944. Morgan, an African American woman, was returning home to Baltimore, MD, after visiting her mother. About 25 miles north of here, the bus driver ordered her to give up her seat so that white passengers could sit. Refusing to comply, she was arrested and jailed in Saluda, VA. Her case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided in Morgan v. Virginia (1946) that laws requiring the segregation of passengers in interstate transportation were unconstitutional. Morgan took her stand 11 years before Rosa Parks in Montgomery, AL.
Sponsor: Friends of the Museum
Locality: Gloucester County
