Dovey Johnson Roundtree

Dovey Johnson Roundtree served as one of the first Black women officers in the Women's Army Corps during the Second World War, an experience that sharpened her resolve to fight the segregation and discrimination she witnessed within the military itself.

After the war, Roundtree earned her law degree from Howard University, studying under Charles Hamilton Houston, the architect of the legal strategy against school segregation, and began building a career as a civil rights attorney in Washington, DC.

In 1955, Roundtree won Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company before the Interstate Commerce Commission, a landmark case establishing that segregation on interstate buses violated federal law — a ruling that predated and helped pave the way for the more widely remembered Freedom Rides of the following decade.

Roundtree later became one of the first Black women ordained as an African Methodist Episcopal minister, combining her legal career with ministry for decades, and continued practising law well into her later years, remaining a respected figure in Washington's legal and religious communities until her death at age 104.