September 7, 2026 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Elizabeth Jennings was on her way to church when a New York City streetcar conductor ordered her off. She refused. The conductor and driver forcibly dragged her from the car, leaving her bloodied and bruised. Jennings got back up and climbed aboard again. The year was 1854, nearly 100 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
What followed was a court battle that would turn the city on its head, and Jennings would turn to a young lawyer taking on one of his first cases: future President Chester A. Arthur. Jerry Mikorenda, author of America's First Freedom Rider, shares the remarkable and forgotten story of Elizabeth Jennings, the family that taught her to fight for her rights, and the landmark legal victory that helped challenge segregation on New York City's public transportation decades before the Civil Rights Movement.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Most people know the story of Rosa Parks,
but few know about an incident that took place in
(00:31):
New York City when a woman by the name of
Elizabeth Jennings brought about change nearly 100 years before Rosa Parks. Reconstruction,
and the Civil War. Here to tell the story is
Jerry Michael Renda, author of America's First Freedom Rider. Take
it away, Jerry.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
On Sunday, July 16, 1854, Elizabeth and her friend Sarah
Adams took a Chatham Street horse car bound for church.
When they refused to leave because they were black, the
conductor assaulted and threw her off. The question I asked
myself was very, very simple. What drove a battered Elizabeth
Jennings to get back off the ground and charge back
onto that horse car? And I really feel that the
(01:12):
answer lie in what Frederick Douglass eventually called her good
New York stock of strong family values. Those strong family
values really start by her father, Thomas L. Jennings. He's
eulogized by Frederick Douglass in a 900-word obituary that he
writes himself, just to show you how important her father
really was In the early 1820s, Jennings owns one of
(01:35):
the largest towering houses in New York City, and he
begins experimenting with chemicals to clean fabrics. And in 1821,
he's granted a patent for the process of dry scouring clothes.
And in short, he ends up inventing a precursor of
dry cleaning, and it revolutionizes the clothing business. He ends
up getting this patent signed by John Quincy Adams and
(01:58):
the letters of patent prove that a black man can
actually have a patent in this country. It's hard for
us to really believe how much that meant to people
back in those days. And the most interesting thing, though,
about that is her father gets the patent. And of course,
in those days, being a merchant and a tailor was
really a competitive business. So another tailor named Abraham Cox decides, hey,
(02:24):
I'm going to say that this is my invention. So
Cox goes around and starts putting all these, what they
call the placards or advertisements around the country saying, come
to my tailoring shop and I'll clean your clothes. I'll
use this new scouring method. Well, Jennings never wanted to
back down from a fight. Doesn't run away or try
to get away from this guy. He moves his tailoring
business right next to where Cox is on Nassau Street.
(02:47):
And the two of them are going at all the
summer of 1821. And Cox finally starts to vandalize Jennings' shop,
and he throws oil of vitriol, acid, all over his
gold leaf sign in the front of his building. And
Jennings says, I had it. I'm bringing you to court.
So November 29th, 1821, in a Marine court in lower Manhattan,
Jennings has a suit against Cox. They're going back and
(03:09):
forth during this trial, which was written up in the
local papers. And Jennings, at a pivotal moment of the trial,
stands up and says, look, And he holds up his
framed letters of patent signed by John Quincy Adams and says, look,
this is my invention. I own the rights and the royalties.
This guy's stealing it from me. Well, the old white
jury goes out and they come back pretty quickly and
(03:32):
they fine unanimously for Jennings and they give him $ 50.
And so I think that that case really sets the
tone for the family to say, look, we are citizens
of this country just like everybody else. We will not
be denied our rights, and when we have our rights violated,
we will go use the legal system of the U.S.,
just like any other citizen, to make sure that we
(03:52):
get restitution and that we're treated like everybody else. We
are equal citizens. And so I think that's really implanted
deeply with the family. And when you branch out from
the father, Elizabeth learns quite a bit from her mother
as well. Her mother was one of the founding members
of a group called the Ladies Literary Society of New
York City. And back in the 1820s and 30s, women
(04:14):
were not able to partake in public life the way
women are today. If they wanted to raise money or
support a cause, they had to do it passively by
just raising the money and then giving it to a
male-run organization so they could decide how to spend it.
But these literary societies also have another uptake to them
in that women who were not really given an equal
(04:37):
opportunity to go to school and learn how to read
and write in those days these groups of women learned
to teach each other how to read and write. So
that's why they call them literary societies. And they had
meetings where women would stand up, they would learn how
to write an essay, and they would read it to
their fellow members and get feedback and talk about the issues.
You know, what are the issues about slavery? What about
(04:57):
our rights to vote? And one of the huge things
that Elizabeth's mother's group and other African-American, even in the
white literary societies, is they had petitions to stop slavery
in the nation's capital. And these women went door to door,
which was pretty... dangerous in those times. I mean, if
a woman was found after dusk out on the streets
in New York City, she was arrested as a prostitute.
(05:17):
It didn't matter who she was. And there's cases of
very famous rich women just happening to accidentally and spending
days in jail. And there was no habeas corpus. Nobody
had to tell you who was there and how long
they were going to be in jail. So by going
out and doing these petitions, they were taking risks and
they would go out in groups. And by 1836, millions
(05:37):
of these petitions land in Congress. And Congress finally says,
We've had it. We don't want any more of these.
We get the message. So even without having a voice
in politics, women were having their presence felt long before
they had to vote. And one of the crowning moments
of this group that Elizabeth's mother is part of, along
with her two sisters, Matilda and Sarah, when Elizabeth's a
(06:01):
very young girl, she ends up being the youngest in
the family, is in 1837 they hold what they call
a mental feast. for the Colored American Newspaper, which is
the newspaper of record for African Americans. Few people know
that the very first African American newspapers started in New
York City. So this mental feast, these women invite men
(06:23):
in to hear all the different things that they're doing
and working on. And of course, in these days, if
a group of men and women got together and intermingled,
it would have been considered scandalous, if not promiscuous, and
beyond pale, as they used to say. So The men
are in a cordoned off area and they see various
skits that they put on. And in one of the speeches,
(06:46):
Elizabeth's mother gets up and she reads a short speech about,
you know, 500 words. So it's called On the Improvement
of the Mind. And if you read it, it reads
as true today as it did almost 200 years ago.
And it's all about how through education is how we
will be able to improve ourselves and become equals. And
(07:06):
This thing goes on for a good day. They raise
a lot of money. And the following year, some of
that money goes to a couple who are escaping through
the Underground Railroad. And the couple turns out to be
Frederick Douglass and his wife, Anna. And that's something I
don't think that he ever forgot.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
And when we come back, more of this remarkable story.
The story of race trailblazer Elizabeth Jennings, here on Our
American Story. Folks, if you love the stories we tell
about this great country, and especially America, the stories of
America's rich past. Know that all of our stories about
American history, from war to innovation, culture, and faith, are
(07:43):
brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
a place where students study all the things that are
beautiful in life and all the things that are good
in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to hillsdale.edu to learn more. And we return to
(08:10):
Our American Stories and the story of America's first freedom writer,
Elizabeth Jennings, with author Jerry Mike Arenda. When we last
left off, Jerry was telling us about Elizabeth's family. Her father,
Thomas L. Jennings, was the first African American to hold
a patent in 1821. Using the money he received from
his patent, an early form of dry cleaning, he was
(08:32):
able to buy freedom for his enslaved family. Elizabeth's mother,
Elizabeth Cartwright, was also an important woman in her own right,
being an important member in an organization that helped Frederick
Douglass escape slavery. Let's get back to the story. Here
again is Jerry Mike Arenda.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
The mother and father are setting a great example for
their children. She herself decides, you know, I'm going to
break the mold as well. And she decides to become
a teacher at a time when it's mostly a male-dominated business.
And also, she plays the organ. Church organists were mostly
all male, and certainly choir leaders were all male. But
(09:12):
she breaks the mold once again, and she becomes a
choir leader for the Second Congregational Church over on Second Avenue,
quite a long walk from where she lives. That all
leads up to the incident on July 16, 1854. During
that time, the city was in the middle of a
week-long heat wave. The shipyards were shut down. People were
(09:35):
collapsing from what they call brain fever at the time.
Horses were dying in the streets. Temperatures were flaring. And
here we have two young women rushing to get to church.
They're already late. It's going to take too long to walk,
and it's too hot really, to walk the almost two
miles to the Second Avenue church. And they decide they're
going to hail down a horse car. And they see
(09:55):
one way in the distance. It's a four mile an
hour world back then. And if you could go four
miles an hour in a horse car, you'd consider yourself
pretty lucky. And so they're waiting and waiting, this car
finally pulls up. It's a light green car. It probably
carries about 24 passengers, but there's maybe only 10 people
in there on an early, very hot Sunday. And they
start to get on. They're about to sit down, and
(10:18):
The conductor comes over and sees who they are and says,
you've got to wait for the next car. And he's
pointing out in the street and they look and they
don't see anything. And Elizabeth says, look, we're we're just
paraphrasing from what you said. Look, we're in a hurry.
I need to get to church. You know, we don't
have time to keep waiting for other cars, what have you.
(10:39):
And she looks around the car and she sees there
are plenty of seats anyway. But the next car is
ready for your people. And she says, I have no people.
And the conductor then turns around to her and says,
your people are, you're waiting for the colored car. You're
not going to ride in this car, basically. And so
they go back and forth. And she says, well, look,
I'm not getting off this car. I need to get
(11:00):
to church. If you want me to wait for that car,
I'm going to wait for it right here. So they're
holding up the car. They won't get off. And the
conductor's now starting to get really agitated. So it's kind
of a standoff between the two young women and this conductor,
the driver's there. trying to hold his horses. Everybody in
the car is starting to look at their watches and
(11:20):
what have you. They're sitting there in this silence in
the heat. And then finally, they see this car coming
in the distance, just like they saw the last one.
And when it gets close enough, there's a sign on
the front of it that says, colored people allowed in
this car. And Elizabeth yells over to them, is there
room in your car? And the driver says, no, there's
more room in your car, but there's no room here.
(11:42):
So they then turn back to the conductor and say, well,
You know, there's your answer. I can't even get, we
can't get in that car. We need to get to
where we're going. And the driver says to them, you
can go in, sit down, but let me tell you something.
Cause any trouble, act up, do anything like that. I'm
throwing you right out of this car. And by this time,
(12:03):
Elizabeth has it. Between the heat, the discrimination, and the
annoyance of what's going on, she finally stands up to
him and says, I'm a respectable person. I was born
and raised in New York. I've never been insulted while
going to church. And he just charges right back and says, well,
I was born in Ireland. I don't care where you
(12:24):
were born. I'm throwing you out of this car now.
You talk back to me, you're going out. So Elizabeth
finally tells him, look, it makes no difference where a
man was born. He's no better or worse for that,
provided he behaves himself. But you're a no good for
nothing and prudent fellow who insults genteel people on their
way to church. And then he says, all right, that's it.
(12:44):
I'm throwing you out. She tells him not to lay
a hand on her. And they actually get in a battle.
Elizabeth grabs a hold of a window sash. And she's
a pretty tough character. He's not able to pull her off.
And so he yells for the driver to come and
help him. So the driver ties up the horses, comes back.
They both pull her off. And she's now at the
(13:06):
top of the stairs of this horse car, which may be,
you know, three or four feet above the ground level.
And they throw her off. She's laying on the ground
where her friend Sarah's already been pushed off, and Sarah
is screaming, don't murder her, she's being murdered, somebody help us,
and finally Elizabeth's just laying there on a cobblestone, she's
(13:27):
bleeding and bruised, and she finally stands up, and they're
getting ready, they kind of clean their hands off and say, well,
that's it, goodbye, and Elizabeth just runs back onto the
horse car. She's not going to be denied this ride.
She's not going to be held back from where she
wants to go. And the conductor's shocked and he yells
(13:47):
at her, you'll sweat for this. The horse car takes
off and he's holding her there, pressed back against the
wall and tells the rider to lash the horses and
run until you see a policeman or a police station.
The car takes off recklessly up Walker Street and Of course,
with these railed horse cars, you have to worry about
them jumping the rail. They jump the rails. I mean,
(14:09):
people get killed. So this is really reckless on the
part of both the conductor and the driver. And they
finally get to around Walker Street and they see a
policeman out on the street. They stop the car and
the policeman goes over and says, all right, what's the
problem there? The conductor says, well, you know, this woman
(14:30):
got on the car. You know, I don't think anybody
really wanted it on here. And so the cop comes
on and he says, does anybody object to her being
on this car? And nobody raises their hand. They're just
looking down. You can tell people are hot and sweating.
They just want to get to where they're going. Nobody complains.
And finally, the policeman pushes her off, says, look, get
(14:51):
off of this car. You don't belong on this car.
And he starts poking her with his, I guess you
would call it a billy club today. He finally pushes
her off. and says, look, don't cause any trouble. Don't
think you can start. Don't go back and start a
riot because we'll find out who you are. And she says,
I'll get redressed for this. And the policeman laughs, well,
(15:13):
see what you can do. I doubt you'll be able
to do anything. And she's dropped in the middle of
nowhere on a Sunday on a deserted street where there is,
I think, a place that sells coal. There's a lumber yard,
a few other businesses that are now closed on a Sunday.
But she finally gets home, and she's so badly beaten
that she's really not able to do anything. And the
whole African-American community now is enraged, like, oh my, how
(15:36):
could this happen to one of our best young professional people?
People are saying, well, the church where she was supposed
to be, they're going to hold a vigil for her
on Monday night. But she's so beaten up, she can't
even get out of bed. So she dictates a letter
to her father explaining what happened in her own words.
And the following night, her father goes to this church meeting,
this vigil, He reads her letter to the standing room
(15:59):
only crowd and says, look, what is it that we
want out of this? And they said, first, we want
this railroad to apologize for treating one of our upstanding
young citizens as a criminal. Second, they should pay for
her wounds because she's not going to be able to
work now for quite a while. She's really beaten and battered.
And third, we're tired of being treated as second class citizens.
(16:22):
We have the same rights as everybody else. We want
our rights recognized to ride transit and get to work
just like every other American. And so her father takes
out ads in all these papers throughout New York and says,
you know, we are going to fight this, and we're
going to fight it for everybody. It's important that my
daughter gets restitution, but it's more important that we get
(16:44):
the right to ride public transportation settled once and for all.
And so he's really serious about this. Like I said,
he puts this out in a number of newspapers across
the state, and they decide that they're going to have
a lawsuit The question is, who would take a lawsuit
from an African-American woman against the powerful Third Avenue Railroad
(17:06):
that in 1854 makes over a million dollars in nickel fares?
That's the real question that they have to answer next.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And you're listening to a heck of a story being
told by Jerry Michael Renda, and it is the story
of Elizabeth Jennings. And what a scene, what a showdown
on that horse car between two men and two women.
And two women dressed to go to church. Not exactly
a wise move by the cops. They thought they were
in the right, though. They thought they had the power,
(17:34):
and they thought they had the law on their side, too.
But Elizabeth's dad, well, he harnessed the power of the church,
the power of the press. And when we come back,
we're going to learn what happens next. The story of
Elizabeth Jennings, the first freedom writer, here on Our American Stories.
(18:08):
And we're back with Our American Stories and the final
portion of our story on Elizabeth Jennings. When we last
left off, Elizabeth and her friend Sarah Adams had gotten
onto a streetcar in New York City to go to church. However,
Elizabeth would be assaulted by the streetcar operators because of
her refusal to leave the car over the color of
(18:28):
her skin and defiance of its operator's slights against her.
Elizabeth's father decided his family would sue, not just for Elizabeth,
who had been beaten pretty badly, but for his entire community.
Let's return to the story. Here again is Jerry Michael Renda.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Her father understood how important this case was. It wasn't
just a matter of getting money and restitution for his
daughter's injuries. Those would heal. He knew that. But what
wouldn't heal is this prejudice against African Americans. And if
you can't ride to work, then you're nobody in this country.
So you have to be able to get two jobs.
(19:06):
You certainly have to be able to get from your
home to really good jobs. So he understands that this
is a really important right for the folks of New
York City and New York State and the country to have.
So he doesn't fool around and just hire a law
firm that'll get him some money. He goes to the
best civil rights, what we would call a civil rights
firm today, which is Culver and Parker. And the reason
(19:27):
for that is Culver, Erasmus Culver, a lawyer from upstate
New York and Vermont, ardent abolitionist his whole life, won
the Lemming slave case in New York City back in 1852,
just a few years before. And I'm sure being on
top of this situation, Thomas Jennings knew of him, knew
(19:47):
of his law firm well, and he goes to to
Culver and they have discussions. And Culver tells him, well, look,
I'm becoming a judge, so I'm not going to be
able to take this case. And in all likelihood, Jennings
probably couldn't even afford to have him take the case.
But he does tell him, look, we just took on
a new lawyer. He passed the bar on in May,
(20:08):
and we think he could do well with this case.
This will be his first case, but we think he
can win it. So they turned to a young Chester Arthur,
just graduated from law school, and now he is ready
for his first case. Arthur then does something very interesting,
and he takes advantage of the new court system in
(20:28):
New York State. And back in 1847, New York State
decided to redo its constitution. And part of that was
creating what they called a unified court system, which meant
the old circuit courts of a judge riding to town
on a horse, setting up a table in the back
of a saloon or in a barn and hearing different cases,
(20:49):
that's all gone. New York State was now going to
have a unified system where you went to courtrooms. You
felt like you were actually before a justice rather than
some friend or somebody who came by every once in
a while. So you were now able to, in New
York State, bring a case in any court you want to.
And so very smartly, young Arthur decides, well, I'm not
(21:11):
going to try this case in New York, Manhattan, where
it happened. I'm going to bring it to the Supreme
Court in the second district, which is Brooklyn. Of course,
Brooklyn is a different city then. So he brings it
there and the trial date is set for February 22nd, 1855.
And of course, we all know what February 22nd is,
George Washington's birthday. But as George Washington's birthday They still
(21:34):
held courts, but it was a much more raucous celebration
in time. So the family gets ready. They go to court.
And of course, it being George Washington's birthday, there are
celebrations going on all over the place. There are fife
and drum bands. There are parades nonstop. People are shooting
off cannons and fireworks and firearms. The balconies and the
(21:55):
rotunda of the city hall are filled with people just
stopping in. And they find out that there's this trial
going on where a black woman is suing the powerful
Third Avenue Railroad. And people gather around and it's almost
like watching a fight of David against Goliath. And so
the rafters are filled with people and are watching this
trial as it goes on. And so the trial gets
(22:19):
underway and the lawyers from the Third Avenue Railroad don't
expect anything. They look at this as a slam dunk.
And in fact, When the conductor and the driver get up,
they plead no contest. They say, yeah, sorry, we did it.
We didn't mean it. And the railroad then stands up
and says, look, these charges should be dismissed. These men
have free will. We have no control over them. And
that's it. And the judge at this point is inclined
(22:42):
to agree with them. And he's getting ready to hit
his gavel. And all of a sudden, Arthur, who was
a very tall and slender young man at the time,
stands up. and says, Your Honor, and he thrusts his
arm into the air, way high into the air, and
he's holding this big heavy book. He says, Your Honor,
I hold here the statutes from 1824, and they show
(23:05):
that public conveyances, they are reliable and responsible for the
actions of their employees. And Arthur gives the statutes to
the Judge Rockwell, who then gives his orders to the jury.
And basically he says that the company was liable for
the actions of their agents, whether committed carelessly, negligently, or
willfully or maliciously, that they were common carriers and as
(23:28):
such bound to carry all respectable persons, that colored persons,
if sober, well-behaved, and free of disease, had the same
rights as others and could neither be excluded by any
rules of the company nor by force of violence. And
in case of such expulsion or exclusion, the company was liable.
And with those orders, the jury goes out And just
(23:49):
like her father, all those years before, the old white
jury comes back and says, Elizabeth has won her case.
And she asks for $ 500, which is a lot of
money back in those days. They decide, as they say,
for peculiar reasons, to cut it down to $ 225. And
the judge throws in another $ 25 to pay off Arthur's fees.
(24:09):
And the place erupted. It was like end of a
Super Bowl or World Series. People were just cheering. They
couldn't believe that this happened. In fact, It was such
a stunning victory that when Horace Greeley, the owner and
editor at the Tribune, hears this, he actually takes the
notes from his reporter and he writes the article. He
calls it a wholesome verdict. And he says, from now on,
(24:31):
African-Americans will be treated just like everybody else. They have
the same rights as everybody else to ride any transportation
in this state, whether it's a ferry, a steamboat, a
horse car, an omnibus. So it's a stunning victory. And
right away, a number of the railroads, there were something
like nine of them five of them say, yeah, we'll
comply with this. But there are others say, no, we'll
(24:52):
fight it in court. We won't do this until you
force us to do it. Elizabeth carries on with her
mother and living in the city. She gets married. She
goes on and teaches, gets involved in a number of
activities with her church. And in 1875, Elizabeth started a
Women's Missionary Association at St. Philip's as a way to
(25:13):
support churches in Haiti and Africa. So life goes on
for Elizabeth And for Chester Arthur, who becomes head of
the Custom House in New York City and eventually is
put on the ticket with Garfield as vice president. And
when Garfield is assassinated, he takes over as president. She
ends up dying of Bright's disease, the same thing that
(25:35):
Arthur did, by the way. She's buried over with the
family in Cypress Hills, then forgotten.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Until now. And you've been listening to the story of
America's first freedom writer, Elizabeth Jennings, and the freedom fighter,
her father, who took the powerful railroad company all the
way to the Supreme Court in Brooklyn. And the Supreme
Court is actually an appellate court in New York. The
appellate court is the Supreme Court. That's New York. And
(26:05):
by the way, a special thanks to Scott Levin for
gathering the audio and the story and to Monty Montgomery
for producing the piece, And what a story about the
rule of law, which we talk about a lot here.
And by the way, not always was our rule of
law fairly applied or administered. And in this case, indeed
it was. With a whopping verdict back then, $ 250 was
(26:28):
real money. And of course, legal fees were thrown in too.
We all got to know who Chester A. Arthur is
and was because he became president. But Elizabeth Jennings... Well,
she died unknown, and that's why we tell the stories
we tell here at Our American Stories. Rule of law matters.
It separates us from so many other countries around the world.
(26:51):
And regrettably, the rule of law did not apply equally
to all Americans. It had to be fought for, for
black Americans particularly. The story of Elizabeth Jennings, the first
freedom writer, here on Our American Stories. Thank you.
This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go
to the iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. Most people know the story of Rosa Parks,
but few know about an incident that took place in
(00:31):
New York City when a woman by the name of
Elizabeth Jennings brought about change nearly 100 years before Rosa Parks. Reconstruction,
and the Civil War. Here to tell the story is
Jerry Michael Renda, author of America's First Freedom Rider. Take
it away, Jerry.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
On Sunday, July 16, 1854, Elizabeth and her friend Sarah
Adams took a Chatham Street horse car bound for church.
When they refused to leave because they were black, the
conductor assaulted and threw her off. The question I asked
myself was very, very simple. What drove a battered Elizabeth
Jennings to get back off the ground and charge back
onto that horse car? And I really feel that the
(01:12):
answer lie in what Frederick Douglass eventually called her good
New York stock of strong family values. Those strong family
values really start by her father, Thomas L. Jennings. He's
eulogized by Frederick Douglass in a 900-word obituary that he
writes himself, just to show you how important her father
really was In the early 1820s, Jennings owns one of
(01:35):
the largest towering houses in New York City, and he
begins experimenting with chemicals to clean fabrics. And in 1821,
he's granted a patent for the process of dry scouring clothes.
And in short, he ends up inventing a precursor of
dry cleaning, and it revolutionizes the clothing business. He ends
up getting this patent signed by John Quincy Adams and
(01:58):
the letters of patent prove that a black man can
actually have a patent in this country. It's hard for
us to really believe how much that meant to people
back in those days. And the most interesting thing, though,
about that is her father gets the patent. And of course,
in those days, being a merchant and a tailor was
really a competitive business. So another tailor named Abraham Cox decides, hey,
(02:24):
I'm going to say that this is my invention. So
Cox goes around and starts putting all these, what they
call the placards or advertisements around the country saying, come
to my tailoring shop and I'll clean your clothes. I'll
use this new scouring method. Well, Jennings never wanted to
back down from a fight. Doesn't run away or try
to get away from this guy. He moves his tailoring
business right next to where Cox is on Nassau Street.
(02:47):
And the two of them are going at all the
summer of 1821. And Cox finally starts to vandalize Jennings' shop,
and he throws oil of vitriol, acid, all over his
gold leaf sign in the front of his building. And
Jennings says, I had it. I'm bringing you to court.
So November 29th, 1821, in a Marine court in lower Manhattan,
Jennings has a suit against Cox. They're going back and
(03:09):
forth during this trial, which was written up in the
local papers. And Jennings, at a pivotal moment of the trial,
stands up and says, look, And he holds up his
framed letters of patent signed by John Quincy Adams and says, look,
this is my invention. I own the rights and the royalties.
This guy's stealing it from me. Well, the old white
jury goes out and they come back pretty quickly and
(03:32):
they fine unanimously for Jennings and they give him $ 50.
And so I think that that case really sets the
tone for the family to say, look, we are citizens
of this country just like everybody else. We will not
be denied our rights, and when we have our rights violated,
we will go use the legal system of the U.S.,
just like any other citizen, to make sure that we
(03:52):
get restitution and that we're treated like everybody else. We
are equal citizens. And so I think that's really implanted
deeply with the family. And when you branch out from
the father, Elizabeth learns quite a bit from her mother
as well. Her mother was one of the founding members
of a group called the Ladies Literary Society of New
York City. And back in the 1820s and 30s, women
(04:14):
were not able to partake in public life the way
women are today. If they wanted to raise money or
support a cause, they had to do it passively by
just raising the money and then giving it to a
male-run organization so they could decide how to spend it.
But these literary societies also have another uptake to them
in that women who were not really given an equal
(04:37):
opportunity to go to school and learn how to read
and write in those days these groups of women learned
to teach each other how to read and write. So
that's why they call them literary societies. And they had
meetings where women would stand up, they would learn how
to write an essay, and they would read it to
their fellow members and get feedback and talk about the issues.
You know, what are the issues about slavery? What about
(04:57):
our rights to vote? And one of the huge things
that Elizabeth's mother's group and other African-American, even in the
white literary societies, is they had petitions to stop slavery
in the nation's capital. And these women went door to door,
which was pretty... dangerous in those times. I mean, if
a woman was found after dusk out on the streets
in New York City, she was arrested as a prostitute.
(05:17):
It didn't matter who she was. And there's cases of
very famous rich women just happening to accidentally and spending
days in jail. And there was no habeas corpus. Nobody
had to tell you who was there and how long
they were going to be in jail. So by going
out and doing these petitions, they were taking risks and
they would go out in groups. And by 1836, millions
(05:37):
of these petitions land in Congress. And Congress finally says,
We've had it. We don't want any more of these.
We get the message. So even without having a voice
in politics, women were having their presence felt long before
they had to vote. And one of the crowning moments
of this group that Elizabeth's mother is part of, along
with her two sisters, Matilda and Sarah, when Elizabeth's a
(06:01):
very young girl, she ends up being the youngest in
the family, is in 1837 they hold what they call
a mental feast. for the Colored American Newspaper, which is
the newspaper of record for African Americans. Few people know
that the very first African American newspapers started in New
York City. So this mental feast, these women invite men
(06:23):
in to hear all the different things that they're doing
and working on. And of course, in these days, if
a group of men and women got together and intermingled,
it would have been considered scandalous, if not promiscuous, and
beyond pale, as they used to say. So The men
are in a cordoned off area and they see various
skits that they put on. And in one of the speeches,
(06:46):
Elizabeth's mother gets up and she reads a short speech about,
you know, 500 words. So it's called On the Improvement
of the Mind. And if you read it, it reads
as true today as it did almost 200 years ago.
And it's all about how through education is how we
will be able to improve ourselves and become equals. And
(07:06):
This thing goes on for a good day. They raise
a lot of money. And the following year, some of
that money goes to a couple who are escaping through
the Underground Railroad. And the couple turns out to be
Frederick Douglass and his wife, Anna. And that's something I
don't think that he ever forgot.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
And when we come back, more of this remarkable story.
The story of race trailblazer Elizabeth Jennings, here on Our
American Story. Folks, if you love the stories we tell
about this great country, and especially America, the stories of
America's rich past. Know that all of our stories about
American history, from war to innovation, culture, and faith, are
(07:43):
brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
a place where students study all the things that are
beautiful in life and all the things that are good
in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to hillsdale.edu to learn more. And we return to
(08:10):
Our American Stories and the story of America's first freedom writer,
Elizabeth Jennings, with author Jerry Mike Arenda. When we last
left off, Jerry was telling us about Elizabeth's family. Her father,
Thomas L. Jennings, was the first African American to hold
a patent in 1821. Using the money he received from
his patent, an early form of dry cleaning, he was
(08:32):
able to buy freedom for his enslaved family. Elizabeth's mother,
Elizabeth Cartwright, was also an important woman in her own right,
being an important member in an organization that helped Frederick
Douglass escape slavery. Let's get back to the story. Here
again is Jerry Mike Arenda.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
The mother and father are setting a great example for
their children. She herself decides, you know, I'm going to
break the mold as well. And she decides to become
a teacher at a time when it's mostly a male-dominated business.
And also, she plays the organ. Church organists were mostly
all male, and certainly choir leaders were all male. But
(09:12):
she breaks the mold once again, and she becomes a
choir leader for the Second Congregational Church over on Second Avenue,
quite a long walk from where she lives. That all
leads up to the incident on July 16, 1854. During
that time, the city was in the middle of a
week-long heat wave. The shipyards were shut down. People were
(09:35):
collapsing from what they call brain fever at the time.
Horses were dying in the streets. Temperatures were flaring. And
here we have two young women rushing to get to church.
They're already late. It's going to take too long to walk,
and it's too hot really, to walk the almost two
miles to the Second Avenue church. And they decide they're
going to hail down a horse car. And they see
(09:55):
one way in the distance. It's a four mile an
hour world back then. And if you could go four
miles an hour in a horse car, you'd consider yourself
pretty lucky. And so they're waiting and waiting, this car
finally pulls up. It's a light green car. It probably
carries about 24 passengers, but there's maybe only 10 people
in there on an early, very hot Sunday. And they
start to get on. They're about to sit down, and
(10:18):
The conductor comes over and sees who they are and says,
you've got to wait for the next car. And he's
pointing out in the street and they look and they
don't see anything. And Elizabeth says, look, we're we're just
paraphrasing from what you said. Look, we're in a hurry.
I need to get to church. You know, we don't
have time to keep waiting for other cars, what have you.
(10:39):
And she looks around the car and she sees there
are plenty of seats anyway. But the next car is
ready for your people. And she says, I have no people.
And the conductor then turns around to her and says,
your people are, you're waiting for the colored car. You're
not going to ride in this car, basically. And so
they go back and forth. And she says, well, look,
I'm not getting off this car. I need to get
(11:00):
to church. If you want me to wait for that car,
I'm going to wait for it right here. So they're
holding up the car. They won't get off. And the
conductor's now starting to get really agitated. So it's kind
of a standoff between the two young women and this conductor,
the driver's there. trying to hold his horses. Everybody in
the car is starting to look at their watches and
(11:20):
what have you. They're sitting there in this silence in
the heat. And then finally, they see this car coming
in the distance, just like they saw the last one.
And when it gets close enough, there's a sign on
the front of it that says, colored people allowed in
this car. And Elizabeth yells over to them, is there
room in your car? And the driver says, no, there's
more room in your car, but there's no room here.
(11:42):
So they then turn back to the conductor and say, well,
You know, there's your answer. I can't even get, we
can't get in that car. We need to get to
where we're going. And the driver says to them, you
can go in, sit down, but let me tell you something.
Cause any trouble, act up, do anything like that. I'm
throwing you right out of this car. And by this time,
(12:03):
Elizabeth has it. Between the heat, the discrimination, and the
annoyance of what's going on, she finally stands up to
him and says, I'm a respectable person. I was born
and raised in New York. I've never been insulted while
going to church. And he just charges right back and says, well,
I was born in Ireland. I don't care where you
(12:24):
were born. I'm throwing you out of this car now.
You talk back to me, you're going out. So Elizabeth
finally tells him, look, it makes no difference where a
man was born. He's no better or worse for that,
provided he behaves himself. But you're a no good for
nothing and prudent fellow who insults genteel people on their
way to church. And then he says, all right, that's it.
(12:44):
I'm throwing you out. She tells him not to lay
a hand on her. And they actually get in a battle.
Elizabeth grabs a hold of a window sash. And she's
a pretty tough character. He's not able to pull her off.
And so he yells for the driver to come and
help him. So the driver ties up the horses, comes back.
They both pull her off. And she's now at the
(13:06):
top of the stairs of this horse car, which may be,
you know, three or four feet above the ground level.
And they throw her off. She's laying on the ground
where her friend Sarah's already been pushed off, and Sarah
is screaming, don't murder her, she's being murdered, somebody help us,
and finally Elizabeth's just laying there on a cobblestone, she's
(13:27):
bleeding and bruised, and she finally stands up, and they're
getting ready, they kind of clean their hands off and say, well,
that's it, goodbye, and Elizabeth just runs back onto the
horse car. She's not going to be denied this ride.
She's not going to be held back from where she
wants to go. And the conductor's shocked and he yells
(13:47):
at her, you'll sweat for this. The horse car takes
off and he's holding her there, pressed back against the
wall and tells the rider to lash the horses and
run until you see a policeman or a police station.
The car takes off recklessly up Walker Street and Of course,
with these railed horse cars, you have to worry about
them jumping the rail. They jump the rails. I mean,
(14:09):
people get killed. So this is really reckless on the
part of both the conductor and the driver. And they
finally get to around Walker Street and they see a
policeman out on the street. They stop the car and
the policeman goes over and says, all right, what's the
problem there? The conductor says, well, you know, this woman
(14:30):
got on the car. You know, I don't think anybody
really wanted it on here. And so the cop comes
on and he says, does anybody object to her being
on this car? And nobody raises their hand. They're just
looking down. You can tell people are hot and sweating.
They just want to get to where they're going. Nobody complains.
And finally, the policeman pushes her off, says, look, get
(14:51):
off of this car. You don't belong on this car.
And he starts poking her with his, I guess you
would call it a billy club today. He finally pushes
her off. and says, look, don't cause any trouble. Don't
think you can start. Don't go back and start a
riot because we'll find out who you are. And she says,
I'll get redressed for this. And the policeman laughs, well,
(15:13):
see what you can do. I doubt you'll be able
to do anything. And she's dropped in the middle of
nowhere on a Sunday on a deserted street where there is,
I think, a place that sells coal. There's a lumber yard,
a few other businesses that are now closed on a Sunday.
But she finally gets home, and she's so badly beaten
that she's really not able to do anything. And the
whole African-American community now is enraged, like, oh my, how
(15:36):
could this happen to one of our best young professional people?
People are saying, well, the church where she was supposed
to be, they're going to hold a vigil for her
on Monday night. But she's so beaten up, she can't
even get out of bed. So she dictates a letter
to her father explaining what happened in her own words.
And the following night, her father goes to this church meeting,
this vigil, He reads her letter to the standing room
(15:59):
only crowd and says, look, what is it that we
want out of this? And they said, first, we want
this railroad to apologize for treating one of our upstanding
young citizens as a criminal. Second, they should pay for
her wounds because she's not going to be able to
work now for quite a while. She's really beaten and battered.
And third, we're tired of being treated as second class citizens.
(16:22):
We have the same rights as everybody else. We want
our rights recognized to ride transit and get to work
just like every other American. And so her father takes
out ads in all these papers throughout New York and says,
you know, we are going to fight this, and we're
going to fight it for everybody. It's important that my
daughter gets restitution, but it's more important that we get
(16:44):
the right to ride public transportation settled once and for all.
And so he's really serious about this. Like I said,
he puts this out in a number of newspapers across
the state, and they decide that they're going to have
a lawsuit The question is, who would take a lawsuit
from an African-American woman against the powerful Third Avenue Railroad
(17:06):
that in 1854 makes over a million dollars in nickel fares?
That's the real question that they have to answer next.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
And you're listening to a heck of a story being
told by Jerry Michael Renda, and it is the story
of Elizabeth Jennings. And what a scene, what a showdown
on that horse car between two men and two women.
And two women dressed to go to church. Not exactly
a wise move by the cops. They thought they were
in the right, though. They thought they had the power,
(17:34):
and they thought they had the law on their side, too.
But Elizabeth's dad, well, he harnessed the power of the church,
the power of the press. And when we come back,
we're going to learn what happens next. The story of
Elizabeth Jennings, the first freedom writer, here on Our American Stories.
(18:08):
And we're back with Our American Stories and the final
portion of our story on Elizabeth Jennings. When we last
left off, Elizabeth and her friend Sarah Adams had gotten
onto a streetcar in New York City to go to church. However,
Elizabeth would be assaulted by the streetcar operators because of
her refusal to leave the car over the color of
(18:28):
her skin and defiance of its operator's slights against her.
Elizabeth's father decided his family would sue, not just for Elizabeth,
who had been beaten pretty badly, but for his entire community.
Let's return to the story. Here again is Jerry Michael Renda.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
Her father understood how important this case was. It wasn't
just a matter of getting money and restitution for his
daughter's injuries. Those would heal. He knew that. But what
wouldn't heal is this prejudice against African Americans. And if
you can't ride to work, then you're nobody in this country.
So you have to be able to get two jobs.
(19:06):
You certainly have to be able to get from your
home to really good jobs. So he understands that this
is a really important right for the folks of New
York City and New York State and the country to have.
So he doesn't fool around and just hire a law
firm that'll get him some money. He goes to the
best civil rights, what we would call a civil rights
firm today, which is Culver and Parker. And the reason
(19:27):
for that is Culver, Erasmus Culver, a lawyer from upstate
New York and Vermont, ardent abolitionist his whole life, won
the Lemming slave case in New York City back in 1852,
just a few years before. And I'm sure being on
top of this situation, Thomas Jennings knew of him, knew
(19:47):
of his law firm well, and he goes to to
Culver and they have discussions. And Culver tells him, well, look,
I'm becoming a judge, so I'm not going to be
able to take this case. And in all likelihood, Jennings
probably couldn't even afford to have him take the case.
But he does tell him, look, we just took on
a new lawyer. He passed the bar on in May,
(20:08):
and we think he could do well with this case.
This will be his first case, but we think he
can win it. So they turned to a young Chester Arthur,
just graduated from law school, and now he is ready
for his first case. Arthur then does something very interesting,
and he takes advantage of the new court system in
(20:28):
New York State. And back in 1847, New York State
decided to redo its constitution. And part of that was
creating what they called a unified court system, which meant
the old circuit courts of a judge riding to town
on a horse, setting up a table in the back
of a saloon or in a barn and hearing different cases,
(20:49):
that's all gone. New York State was now going to
have a unified system where you went to courtrooms. You
felt like you were actually before a justice rather than
some friend or somebody who came by every once in
a while. So you were now able to, in New
York State, bring a case in any court you want to.
And so very smartly, young Arthur decides, well, I'm not
(21:11):
going to try this case in New York, Manhattan, where
it happened. I'm going to bring it to the Supreme
Court in the second district, which is Brooklyn. Of course,
Brooklyn is a different city then. So he brings it
there and the trial date is set for February 22nd, 1855.
And of course, we all know what February 22nd is,
George Washington's birthday. But as George Washington's birthday They still
(21:34):
held courts, but it was a much more raucous celebration
in time. So the family gets ready. They go to court.
And of course, it being George Washington's birthday, there are
celebrations going on all over the place. There are fife
and drum bands. There are parades nonstop. People are shooting
off cannons and fireworks and firearms. The balconies and the
(21:55):
rotunda of the city hall are filled with people just
stopping in. And they find out that there's this trial
going on where a black woman is suing the powerful
Third Avenue Railroad. And people gather around and it's almost
like watching a fight of David against Goliath. And so
the rafters are filled with people and are watching this
trial as it goes on. And so the trial gets
(22:19):
underway and the lawyers from the Third Avenue Railroad don't
expect anything. They look at this as a slam dunk.
And in fact, When the conductor and the driver get up,
they plead no contest. They say, yeah, sorry, we did it.
We didn't mean it. And the railroad then stands up
and says, look, these charges should be dismissed. These men
have free will. We have no control over them. And
that's it. And the judge at this point is inclined
(22:42):
to agree with them. And he's getting ready to hit
his gavel. And all of a sudden, Arthur, who was
a very tall and slender young man at the time,
stands up. and says, Your Honor, and he thrusts his
arm into the air, way high into the air, and
he's holding this big heavy book. He says, Your Honor,
I hold here the statutes from 1824, and they show
(23:05):
that public conveyances, they are reliable and responsible for the
actions of their employees. And Arthur gives the statutes to
the Judge Rockwell, who then gives his orders to the jury.
And basically he says that the company was liable for
the actions of their agents, whether committed carelessly, negligently, or
willfully or maliciously, that they were common carriers and as
(23:28):
such bound to carry all respectable persons, that colored persons,
if sober, well-behaved, and free of disease, had the same
rights as others and could neither be excluded by any
rules of the company nor by force of violence. And
in case of such expulsion or exclusion, the company was liable.
And with those orders, the jury goes out And just
(23:49):
like her father, all those years before, the old white
jury comes back and says, Elizabeth has won her case.
And she asks for $ 500, which is a lot of
money back in those days. They decide, as they say,
for peculiar reasons, to cut it down to $ 225. And
the judge throws in another $ 25 to pay off Arthur's fees.
(24:09):
And the place erupted. It was like end of a
Super Bowl or World Series. People were just cheering. They
couldn't believe that this happened. In fact, It was such
a stunning victory that when Horace Greeley, the owner and
editor at the Tribune, hears this, he actually takes the
notes from his reporter and he writes the article. He
calls it a wholesome verdict. And he says, from now on,
(24:31):
African-Americans will be treated just like everybody else. They have
the same rights as everybody else to ride any transportation
in this state, whether it's a ferry, a steamboat, a
horse car, an omnibus. So it's a stunning victory. And
right away, a number of the railroads, there were something
like nine of them five of them say, yeah, we'll
comply with this. But there are others say, no, we'll
(24:52):
fight it in court. We won't do this until you
force us to do it. Elizabeth carries on with her
mother and living in the city. She gets married. She
goes on and teaches, gets involved in a number of
activities with her church. And in 1875, Elizabeth started a
Women's Missionary Association at St. Philip's as a way to
(25:13):
support churches in Haiti and Africa. So life goes on
for Elizabeth And for Chester Arthur, who becomes head of
the Custom House in New York City and eventually is
put on the ticket with Garfield as vice president. And
when Garfield is assassinated, he takes over as president. She
ends up dying of Bright's disease, the same thing that
(25:35):
Arthur did, by the way. She's buried over with the
family in Cypress Hills, then forgotten.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Until now. And you've been listening to the story of
America's first freedom writer, Elizabeth Jennings, and the freedom fighter,
her father, who took the powerful railroad company all the
way to the Supreme Court in Brooklyn. And the Supreme
Court is actually an appellate court in New York. The
appellate court is the Supreme Court. That's New York. And
(26:05):
by the way, a special thanks to Scott Levin for
gathering the audio and the story and to Monty Montgomery
for producing the piece, And what a story about the
rule of law, which we talk about a lot here.
And by the way, not always was our rule of
law fairly applied or administered. And in this case, indeed
it was. With a whopping verdict back then, $ 250 was
(26:28):
real money. And of course, legal fees were thrown in too.
We all got to know who Chester A. Arthur is
and was because he became president. But Elizabeth Jennings... Well,
she died unknown, and that's why we tell the stories
we tell here at Our American Stories. Rule of law matters.
It separates us from so many other countries around the world.
(26:51):
And regrettably, the rule of law did not apply equally
to all Americans. It had to be fought for, for
black Americans particularly. The story of Elizabeth Jennings, the first
freedom writer, here on Our American Stories. Thank you.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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