Last week, Black America 250 paid tribute to the life of Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. Today, we take a deeper look at an event that defined who, the then- not-yet-30-year old Pauli Murray, was.
On Saturday, March 23, 1940, the day before Easter, friends Pauli Murray and Adelene McBean — two young Black people — were arrested on a Greyhound bus near Petersburg, Virginia, for refusing to move to the back of the bus. The Jim Crow laws in Virginia at the time required segregated seating on public transportation, and Murray and McBean were arrested and jailed. This was 15 years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Both women were already actively engaged in the struggle for racial equality. By the time they boarded an old bus bound for Durham, North Carolina, in late March 1940, Pauli Murray and Adelene McBean had long discussed how they could most effectively challenge racial segregation.
The poor condition of their bus gave them the opportunity to translate their thoughts into action. Seated near the back of the bus, directly over a wheel, the two young women suffered with every bump. When McBean began to feel a sharp pain in her side, she and Murray moved to occupy seats in the middle of the bus.
The driver told them to move back. They refused and, after a lengthy debate with the driver and local police officers, were arrested.