Lucy Mae Eskridge: Little Rock's Rosa Parks

On September 12, 1949, Mrs. Lucy Mae Eskridge boarded her bus at Little Rock’s Rock Island Station. On Main Street, an off-duty bus driver also boarded. He demanded her seat. He was white, she was African American, and the law demanded it. She refused. Under threat, she reluctantly stood. As she disembarked, the off-duty driver struck her with such force it threw her off the bus. He continued to beat her on the sidewalk. Eskridge sued for her injuries. The courts denied her claim as she had broken segregation law. Six years later in 1956, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision undermined segregation law, Rosa Park’s refusal to surrender her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, led to the desegregation of city buses. Little Rock’s buses desegregated the same year. My name is John Kirk for the History Department at UALR and this has been an Arkansas moment.