Amy Nathan is the author of the new book Riding into History: The Surprising Story of Sarah Keys Evans and the Fight to Desegregate Bus Travel, written with the civil rights figure Sarah Keys Evans, and the new children's book Sarah Keys Evans: The Power of Quiet Courage.
Q: You have written two new books that focus on the civil rights figure Sarah Keys Evans (1928-2023). How did you learn about her, and why did you decide to write two books about her?
A: In 2001, as I was finishing up work on a National Geographic book for young readers about women in the U.S. military, I visited the newly opened Military Women’s Memorial at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery — and there on the wall was a plaque about a civil rights victory won by two Black women in 1955 that I had never heard about, even though I had majored in history in college and read a lot about the civil rights movement.
The plaque told how these two women, who had both been in the Women’s Army Corps — Sarah Keys Evans and her lawyer, Dovey Johnson Roundtree — won a legal victory in 1955 at the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in a case called Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company.
It focused on an unjust arrest that occurred in the very early morning hours of August 2, 1952, when Sarah Keys (her maiden name), then age 23, was arrested in her Army uniform in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, for not moving to the back of a bus, so that a white Marine could take her seat.
Her bus trip had started many hours earlier on August 1 in New Jersey where Private First Class Sarah Keys, a member of the Women’s Army Corps, was working at the Fort Dix Army hospital.
A copy of the ICC’s 1955 decision was posted on the plaque at the Memorial. The decision said that segregation on interstate buses would no longer be allowed.
It was announced one week before another Black woman, Rosa Parks, made her stand for fairness on a different kind of bus — a local bus in Alabama. Of course, I knew a lot about Rosa Parks’s role in civil rights history.
As I read this plaque at the Military Women’s Memorial, I thought that this other civil rights victory, won by a young Sarah Keys, should become well known, too.
The Military Women’s Memorial agreed. In fact, its leader, Brigadier General, USAF (retired) Wilma L. Vaught, liked to call Sarah Keys Evans “The Army’s Rosa Parks.”
The Memorial staff put me in touch with Sarah Keys Evans. She had not been featured in any major books on civil rights history, but the Memorial staff told me about a recent article in Washingtonian magazine that described her victory and that there was one book that did mention her ICC victory, written in 1983 by a Columbia graduate student, Catherine A. Barnes, Journey from Jim Crow.
I read the article, the book, and also looked at additional information the Military Women’s Memorial had so that I’d be better informed before contacting Mrs. Evans.
When I phoned her at her apartment in Brooklyn, where she lived after leaving the Women’s Army Corps, I asked if I could interview her to share her story in a book for young people.
I said that the Military Women’s Memorial had recommended that I contact her and that I had recently written several books for young people that introduced them to various kinds of remarkable people.
One was a book about musicians for Oxford University Press, as well as two about military women for National Geographic—one on the U.S. women pilots of World War II and another on all women who had served in the military from the Revolutionary War on. I offered to send her copies of the books.
She said she would be glad to be interviewed as long as I promised to always show her what I wrote so she could make sure it was accurate. I agreed. In January 2004, we had our first phone interview. I called back several more times that year and continued speaking with her off and on for nearly 20 years, either by phone or in person.
In 2006, we worked together to create a very short book for young readers about her civil rights victory. We had to self-publish that book, Take a Seat--Make a Stand, because we were unable to find a regular publisher willing to publish the book.
Not many copies of the book were sold but eventually it found its way to Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina (where Sarah Keys Evans had been arrested in 1952). The head of that city’s Canal Museum had by chance found an old news clipping about Sarah Keys Evans and in 2010 posted a small sign about her in the museum.
That’s how Rodney Pierce, a young Black tour guide in the museum (and future educator and later state legislator) found out about her. Later, he saw an ad about our little book in a Black history magazine and emailed us in 2013 to learn more, describing his goal of having his city honor Mrs. Evans. We sent him copies of the book, which he shared with local officials and with other Black educators in Roanoke Rapids.
These Black educators had grown up in Roanoke Rapids but had never heard about Sarah Keys Evans. In 2018, four of them formed a committee to enter a contest sponsored by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, which would provide money to North Carolina communities so they could create public art to honor North Carolina heroes whose stories were not well known.
Mrs. Evans and I wrote letters of support for the committee’s contest entry, and in 2019 we helped arrange for a videographer the committee had hired to record an interview with her in a library near her Brooklyn apartment. That recording, in which she told about her 1952 arrest, was sent in as part of the committee’s contest entry and definitely helped them win.
It’s remarkable that in interviews she did with me and with reporters who have interviewed her over the years— including the Roanoke Rapids committee’s videographer—she always described her arrest in the same way. The events of that August 1952 night were emblazoned on her memory.
In 2020, the committee used the funds provided by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation to install a large monument honoring Sarah Keys Evans in Roanoke Rapids in its Martin Luther King, Jr., Park.
The monument consists of two semi-circular arcs facing each other with four mural illustrations painted on the inside wall of each arc to tell the story of her arrest and ICC victory. In 2022, Rodney Pierce also had a historical marker about her installed in Roanoke Rapids. An excerpt from the interview she recorded for the contest entry is available now on the website of the monument.
Mrs. Evans and I decided that these amazing new developments meant we should write two new books — one for young readers and a more comprehensive book for adults — to give a full account of her role in history and highlight the remarkable “coming together” in Roanoke Rapids where some of its white citizens, including the mayor, joined with Black educators to help create the monument, showing that change is possible.
Sarah and I resumed our interviews, giving us a chance to explore more fully her feelings about the arrest and about her life both before and after.
We wanted both new books to describe not only her arrest and the creation of the monument, but to also place her story within the context of the wider struggle to end transportation segregation from the early 1800s onward.
We also wanted the books to discuss her family background, to explore what gave her the courage to face the danger of being arrested and then pursue a legal protest.
The few civil rights history books that mention her do so mainly in terms of the legal impact of her 1955 ICC victory— as the first time the ICC ruled against the “separate-but-equal” segregation policy established in 1896 by the Supreme Court in its Plessy v. Ferguson decision.
The Supreme Court had also just ruled against using “separate-but-equal” in the field of education in its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. This meant that two federal agencies had by then taken a firm stand against segregation. That is what makes her ICC victory important in legal history.
However, Sarah Keys Evans saw her ICC victory differently —not simply as a legal victory, but as a moral victory. As she explained, “I knew I had been unjustly accused of disorderly conduct. I believe in people being treated right and treated fairly no matter what the situation.”
So we wanted to create new books that present both views of her victory—as a legal milestone and as a victory for treating people fairly.
We also wanted to highlight the personal toll the arrest had on her, making her more cautious in interacting with others. She explained that because the 1952 arrest caught her by surprise, “I started questioning everything in my mind before acting on it or giving an answer.”
Luckily, we were able to find two publishers who agreed to help us create new books for young readers and adults that give a full account of this hero’s life, her place in civil rights history, and her wish for “people being treated right and treated fairly.”
Q: What do you think Jermaine Powell’s illustrations add to the children’s book?
A: This book tells a story about unfairness and danger, while also describing how a brave young woman emerged victorious in the end, an outcome that was achieved in large part because of the strength and confidence she gained from her family and childhood experiences.
The dramatic color palette that Jermaine Powell uses in the illustrations makes clear that although danger arises in this story, there will be a positive outcome. The book’s cover especially encompasses all these elements: hope, danger, and determination, with a bright sun suggesting victory.
The story of Sarah Keys’s arrest may seem scary to some children. So the bright yellow and blue colors on the book’s cover and in the early pages about Sarah Keys Evans’s childhood help set the tone that this will ultimately be a positive story.
Even the moving illustration for pages 10 and 11 (which discuss slavery) provides a message of courage by using both dark and light tones, and a rainbow, too.
Those two pages describe how her father told her as a child that many years earlier enslaved people sought freedom by hiding in caves on their farmland. Back then, that land was owned by free Black farmers who risked danger to help the “freedom-seekers” because it was “the right thing to do.”
That foreshadows the choice Sarah Keys would make as an adult when she faced danger and then sought to find a way to keep that dangerous situation from happening to others.
Later, dark-colored illustrations dominate on pages 16 to 31, presenting the danger and uncertainty Sarah Keys faced being arrested and trying to win a legal victory. The color palette then shifts back to more positive tones with illustrations of victory being achieved, and a monument created that young people can visit to keep learning about this young woman’s courage.
Photos included in the Duke book for adults also help personalize the story, introducing readers to Sarah Keys Evans’s family background, the Mother of Mercy school she attended, her life after the ICC victory, and the awards she has received, including the monument in Roanoke Rapids.
Q: Why do you think Sarah Keys Evans's story isn’t better known?
A: Sarah Keys was a shy young woman who was represented primarily by a young woman lawyer, Dovey Johnson Roundtree, who had just graduated from Howard Law School, arguing her first major case. Mid-1950s sexism may have played a role in this ICC victory not receiving as much attention as it might have if it had featured a famous male lawyer.
A more important factor may be that this ICC case wasn’t supported by a well-known organization that could produce crowds of people marching in the streets, calling for Sarah Keys to win a legal victory.
Also, one week after her victory was announced, a massive new civil rights protest began— in Montgomery, Alabama— sparked by Rosa Parks’s arrest.
It gained huge national press attention when that city’s Black citizens boycotted the local segregated buses for more than a year. This protest was also led by a dynamic new civil rights leader who was gaining a lot of public attention, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In addition, although the Sarah Keys ICC decision was obeyed in most areas of the country, it wasn’t in many areas of the South.
The federal government made no effort to enforce it until 1961, when news reports of young Freedom Riders being arrested and mistreated in southern bus stations caused such negative international publicity that the U.S. government finally began to enforce both the Sarah Keys 1955 ICC victory and another ICC decision against train segregation that was also issued in 1955.
When the government finally stepped up, transportation segregation came to an end. However, news outlets focused on the Freedom Riders’ courage, not the courage of Sarah Keys.
Her story began to be better known when the Military Women’s Memorial opened in 1997 and installed that plaque about her the next year. In 2006, she received a Trailblazer Award from the Brooklyn, New York, office of the Department of Justice. That same year, the Military Women’s Memorial recorded an oral history interview with her.
Our little 2006 book may have helped too, with a copy sent to the White House in 2009, prompting an 80th birthday greeting for Mrs. Evans from First Lady Michelle Obama that year, and then later an 85th birthday greeting from both the president and first lady.
However, most books on civil rights history still featured her story mainly in terms of legal history, without presenting her personal story.
Q: Can you say more about how you researched the books? What did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: In addition to doing extensive interviews with Mrs. Evans and many of her relatives, I had already done a lot of research on the civil rights movement for my earlier books, but I had to do a lot of additional research to place her ICC victory in the context of the history of the long struggle to end transportation in both North and South from the early 1800s onward.
I consulted many additional books and articles, particularly new ones that kept being published, as well as reading case reports and scholarly articles on the many legal rulings that had been issued on segregation during those years—both in transportation and in other areas.
Because much of Sarah Keys Evans’s story —her childhood and her arrest— occurred in North Carolina, I needed to learn about the history of racial issues and segregation there.
Luckily I located many excellent books that covered this history, including books on free people of color pre-Civil War and on Black soldiers who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Some were named Keys or Keyes and came from the Washington, North Carolina, area, which for a while was a recruiting station for Black soldiers for the Union Army.
Leesa Jones, founder of that city’s Underground Railroad Museum, shared with me research she had done about free people of color named Keys or Kease who lived there before the Civil War.
Several books and articles I read focused on other remarkable Black women in North Carolina history. In addition, North Carolina has a terrific collection of research articles on any North Carolina topic you can think of—the “NCPedia”—that I consulted regularly. These articles had extensive bibliographies that led me to more books to read.
Education plays an important part in Sarah Keys Evans’s story because of the excellent parochial school her father helped create in their hometown in 1927.
This school played a role in giving her the confidence to deal with her arrest. Its academic curriculum offered such subjects as foreign languages, music instruction, and science that weren’t taught initially in the local public school for Black students.
That’s because in the early 1900s, some North Carolina officials thought vocational education was more appropriate for Black students. So I read many books about schools for Black students, both classical and vocational, in North Carolina and elsewhere in the South.
As for surprises, there were many.
One came from an anonymous “expert reviewer” who read an early version of the Duke manuscript and told me about an excellent article by historian Barbara Y. Welke about Black women from the 1860s through 1880s who bought first class tickets so they could ride in a train’s Ladies Car but were then denied access to that car because they were Black. Those women then filed legal complaints.
The anonymous “expert reviewer” pointed out that the lack of respect shown to those earlier Black women—in not being regarded as “ladies”—was like the lack of respect shown to Sarah Keys who was rudely arrested and not shown the courtesy given to members of the military during wartime. I read Professor Welke’s article, saw the connection, and included many of its examples in the next version of the manuscript.
Another surprise came when a huge 591-page book on the history of Washington, North Carolina, Washington and the Pamlico, was digitized and made available to be downloaded in 2021.
It provides a history of Sarah Keys Evans’s hometown, written in 1976 in honor of the U.S. bicentennial, based on reminiscences by local residents who had done a lot of research using old newspaper articles, local records, and other personal sources.
As I scrolled through the downloaded text, I was amazed to find a quote from Sarah Keys Evans’s father that seemed to be the starting point for creating the parochial school she attended.
By the time her father had returned home after serving in the Navy during World War I, he had become a Catholic, but there was no Catholic church in town. An earlier one had burned down during the Civil War and was never replaced.
Priests from the nearby town of New Bern would come to Washington to say mass in a room rented in a local building. Page 266 of Washington and the Pamlico describes one of those services and includes this quote:
“A question was posed in the early 1920’s. ‘Can anything be done for my people?’ The questioner was David Artis Keys.”
The book goes on to say that this question led to discussions among New Bern clergy and the archdiocese, leading to the creation of the Mother of Mercy School for Black students, built on land that David Artis Keys had helped locate. The school, with a chapel that all could attend—both Black and white—opened in 1927, two years before the birth of Sarah Keys Evans.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m helping to spread the word about these two new books, including speaking about the book for young readers on the evening of February 19 in an online seminar for North Carolina teachers, and taking part in March in a program about both books in Washington, North Carolina (date to be decided).
Several new projects are in the works, with one having been accepted for publication by Arte Publico Press, Listening and Dreaming with Tania, a bilingual (Spanish/English) book for young readers about Pulitzer Prize winning composer Tania León.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Sarah Keys Evans’s family members have been strong supporters for these new books. I’m so grateful for their support and encouragement. It has been an honor to get to know Mrs. Evans and her many family members and friends. They have played an essential role in helping to let more people learn about her inspiring story.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Amy Nathan.
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