Seventh graders at Page Middle School visited First Morning Star Baptist Church in Bena Friday to learn about Irene Morgan, a Black woman who became a civil rights pioneer one summer day in 1944 on a bus traveling from Hayes back to Baltimore.
Morgan was arrested in Middlesex County after refusing to give up her seat for a white person. Her case made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that Virginia’s law enforcing segregation on interstate buses was unconstitutional.
“History is not always pleasant,” said the Rev. Ward Warren, pastor of First Morning Star Baptist, to the assembled seventh grade students. “It’s not always pretty.
“We must show compassion to others,” urged Warren.
“How would you feel,” Warren asked the students. He encouraged them to think about how they would feel if somebody told them to move from their spot on the bus after paying their fare. He told the students about how Jim Crow laws gave preferential treatment to white people in Virginia during ...