Elizabeth Jennings Graham

Elizabeth Jennings was born around 1827 in New York City to free Black parents, her father a successful tailor and community leader, and worked as a schoolteacher and church organist, building a respected standing within New York's free Black community during the antebellum period.

On 16 July 1854 Jennings boarded a segregated New York City streetcar, and when the conductor attempted to forcibly remove her because Black passengers were only permitted on designated cars, she refused to leave, resulting in a physical altercation in which she was forcibly ejected from the vehicle with the assistance of a police officer, an incident that generated substantial outrage within New York's Black community.

Jennings, with support from her church and community, filed a lawsuit against the streetcar company, represented by a young lawyer named Chester A. Arthur, who would later become President of the United States. The case was decided in Jennings's favour in 1855, ruling that Black passengers had the right to ride any streetcar provided they were sober, well-behaved and free from disease — contributing to the gradual desegregation of New York City's streetcar system, predating Rosa Parks's own refusal by exactly a century. Jennings later established one of New York City's first kindergartens for Black children in her own home in 1895.