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IRENE MORGAN v. VIRGINIA 328 U. S. 373, 66 S. Ct. 1050, 90 L. Ed. 1317 (1946) On 14 July 1944 Irene Morgan climbed aboard a Richmond, Virginia, Greyhound bus in Gloucester County, Virginia. Irene was heading to Baltimore, Maryland.
The bus driver ordered her and another African-American woman to move two rows back to the last row in the bus in order to allow four white passengers who were standing to seat. A Virginia state law from 1930 required seating segregation by rows. The bus driver took the action required by the law. Irene Morgan refused to leave her seat, she was forcibly removed from her seat and subsequently convicted of violating the law and resisting arrest. On appeal, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals unanimously sustained the segregation statute. The state's police power under the Tenth Amendment might require segregation among intrastate passengers, but, according to the new interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause, it could not also reach interstate passengers.
Morgan decided to appeal the case on the conviction for violating the segregation laws. After several failures in Virginia state courts, her lawyers appealed on constitutional grounds all the way reading in 1946 the U. S. Supreme Court. Irene Morgan case was argued by Thurgood Marshall, the chief counsel of the NAACP. The action resulted in a landmark ruling in 1946, which overruled state laws that required segregation in situations involved interstate transportation.
Marshall decided to use an innovative approach to argue the case. Instead of relying upon the Equal Protection clause of the 14 th Amendment, Marshall argued successfully that segregation on interstate travel violated the Interstate Commerce clause of the U. S. Constitution. The commerce clause of the Constitution says simply that Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce; however, early decisions of the Supreme Court held that the commerce clause barred states from enforcing laws that interfered unjustifiably with interstate commerce. When Morgan reached the Supreme Court, Justice Black told his colleagues in the Court's private discussion of the case that he still thinks this Court should not decide questions of burden.
Although Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Stone thought that the interference with commerce was not very great, Justice Reed disagreed. To him, the constant rearrangement of seating was disruptive; he noted that people's feelings were aroused by the Jim Crow laws. Justice Reed wrote the Courts opinion ruling in favor of Morgan. He relied on the recognized abstract principle that state laws are invalid if they unduly burden on commerce in matters where uniformity is necessary and in the constitutional sense of useful in accomplishing a permitted purpose. Reeds opinion noted that Virginias statute imposed a burden on interstate passengers who might be called upon to change their seats. At that time eighteen states prohibited and ten states required segregation on buses.
Judge Reed relied primarily on an 1878 case invalidating a Louisiana segregation statute that prohibited segregation on interstate carriers because, the 1878 Court said, the ban interfered with commerce. If a state could not prohibit segregation without interfering with commerce, Reed said, neither could it require segregation. Reed concluded that national uniformity in regulating seating on interstate carriers was necessary to promote and protect national travel. Justice Frankfurter put it in a concurring opinion, the imposition upon national systems of transportation of a crazy-quilt of State laws would operate to burden commerce unreasonably, whether such contradictory and confusing State laws concern racial commingling or racial segregation. Irene Morgan case inspired in 1947 the Journey of Reconciliation.
Activists rode on interstate buses through the Upper South to test the enforcement of the Supreme Courts ruling. "When something's wrong, it's wrong. It needs to be corrected, " (Morgan) Bibliography: Barnes, C. Journey from Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit. Columbia University Press, 1983 Urofsky M. , Finkel man P. March of Liberty: A Constitutional History of the United States - Vol. 2. Oxford University Press, 2002 Encyclopedia Virginia" Morgan v.
Virginia (1946), web The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Jim Crow Stories. Morgan v. Virginia | PBS, web
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Research essay sample on Irene Morgan V Virginia
