Another one rides the bus

Another one rides the bus, originally uploaded by ujima.

April 17,1863 a black woman was forcibly removed from a horse-drawn streetcar in San Francisco. Her father, brought suit on her behalf against the Omnibus Railroad Company. The successful suit resulted in $5,000 in damages awarded as well as the right of blacks to ride the street cars. The Charlotte Brown case was one of a few civil rights cases brought by prominent free blacks in California to protest discrimination on public transportation.

Mom was telling Pam the story today of how, in 1944, she boarded the trolley to town and there was a *soldier* with a *rifle* on the bus! The 10,000 white employees of the Philadelphia Transportation Company had gone on strike in protest of the company's proposal that Black men be allowed to drive the trolleys. The memory is still very vivid even though she is now 95 yo.
Read about this story www.historycooperative.org/proceedings/asslh/wolfinger.html