American Experience

Almost certainly, there wouldn't have been Freedom Rides without Irene Morgan. She refused to give up her seat on a bus in Gloucester County, Virginia in July of 1944. She took her case all the way to the Supreme Court in Morgan v. Virginia in June of 1946.

On paper at least, the Supreme Court struck down segregation in interstate travel on buses.

JULIAN BOND

But no state in the South obeyed these decisions, so it was as if they never happened. The Greyhound bus company, the Trailways bus company were able to hide behind the refusal of state law to accommodate to federal law. So despite the fact that you'd had these national rulings which should have been law every place in the country, they weren't in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, across the South. Business as usual.