Sarah Keys-Evans
Women’s Army Corps (WAC), 1951-1953

Sarah Keys-Evans
Women’s Army Corps (WAC), 1951-1953

Three years before Rosa Parks stood up to discrimination by sitting down on an Alabama bus in 1955, Women’s Army Corps (WAC) Private First Class Sarah Keys refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Heading home to Washington, North Carolina, on leave from Fort Dix, New Jersey, on August 1, 1952, Keys sat towards the front of the interstate bus. Initially a direct trip, the bus stopped in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, at which time two new people boarded the bus: a new driver and a white male Marine. In accordance with company policy, the driver told Keys to relinquish her seat for the Marine. She refused. The police arrested Keys, who was wearing her WAC uniform, on charges of disorderly conduct.  She spent the night in jail, which she recalls as being filthy, so she paced her cell in heels all night rather than sit.  She thought to herself,
“I don’t belong here, why would I come to jail for the steps and moves I’ve made up to here?” Later convinced to sue, Keys sought help from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which assigned the case to World War II WAC officer Dovey Johnson Roundtree, herself no stranger to Jim Crow legislation after serving as a recruiter in the South. In November 1955, after three years of legal battles, the Interstate Commerce Commission outlawed segregation of Black passengers on buses crossing state lines in "Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company."  Keys-Evans’ case created a precedent that was used in pivotal civil rights cases.