In 1944, a group of eight Howard University students took a stand against the status quo in segregated Virginia. Now, a commemorative site honors their efforts to fight back against Jim Crow laws.
“These ladies, they were sort of the template of what happened in the '60s and '70s, and they’re the template of how we need to be,” Mark Chandler, a member of the NOVA Parks Board, said.
The group of four freshmen and four seniors from Howard took a bus to D.C. after visiting their professor Caroline Warein Vienna. All eight of them decided to sit in the front of the vehicle.
“The bus driver says, ‘No, you can’t, ride in the front of the bus. You need to ride back where your people belong,’“ Chandler said.
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However, the group of young women didn’t move. As the bus driver called the police, the four freshmen went to the back while the upperclassmen remained in the front before getting arrested for violating the Jim Crow laws.
The group’s actions came 11 years before Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks refused to give up their front seats on segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Both actions served as precursors to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
After the students lost their, the Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney dropped all charges against them.
Discover Black Heritage
“It was another chip from the Jim Crow laws and the barriers that were preventing African Americans to have a safe travel in the United States,” said Karen Campblin, the environmental and climate justice chair for the Fairfax County branch of the Virginia NAACP.
Speakers and guests gathered Wednesday to celebrate the students and unveil a sign that tells the story of the trailblazers inside the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, about 20 minutes east of Dulles International Airport. they hope the garden’s approximately 200,000 annual visitors take a moment to learn about the early civil rights leaders.
“Committed to ensuring that the historical narratives of African American communities is being told and is made sure that it becomes a part of American history,” Campblin said. “The African American history is American history.”
