Before There Was Rosa Parks There Was Elizabeth Jennings: The Story of America's First Freedom Rider

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 one hundred years before
Rosa Parks, reconstruction and the Civil War. Here to tell
the story is Jerry Mike Arenda, author of America's First
Freedom writer, Take It Away, Jerry.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
On Sunday, July sixteenth, eighteen fifty four, Elizabeth and her
friend Sara Adams took a Chathams Street horsecar bound for church.
When they refused to lead because they will lacked, the
conductor assaulted and threw her off. The question I asked
myself was very simple. What drove about it? Elizabeth Jennings
to get back off the ground and charge back onto
that horse car. And I really feel that the ansel lion,

(01:13):
what Frederick Douglass eventually called her, good New York stock
of strong family values. Though strong family values really start
by her father, Thomas L.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Jennings.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
He's eulogized by Frederick Douglas in a nine hundred word
obituary that he writes himself just to show you how
important her father really was. In the early eighteen twenties,
Jennings owns one of the largest talering houses in New
York City and he begins experimenting with chemicals to clean fabrics,
and in eighteen twenty one he's granted a patent for

(01:44):
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 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

(02:07):
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, I'm going
to say that this is mindvention. So Cox goes around

(02:27):
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 wont to back down from
a fight, doesn't run away. I try to get away
from this guy. He moves his tailoring business right next
to where Cox is on Nassauce Street, and the two
of them are going at all the summer of eighteen

(02:49):
twenty one, and Cox finally starts to vandalize jennings shop
and he throws oil of victorol to Ascid all over
his gold leaf sign in the front of his building,
and Jennings says, I had it.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
I'm bringing you to court.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
So November twenty ninth, eighteen twenty one, in the Marine
Court and Lower Manhattan, Jennings has a suit against Cox.
It going back and forth during this trial, which was
written up in the local papers, and Jennings, a pivotal
moment of the trial, stands up and says look, and
he holds up his framed letters of patent signed by

(03:21):
John Quincy Adams says, look, this is my invention. I
own the rights in the Royl says, this guy's stealing
it from me. Well, the old white Jewelry goes out
and they come back pretty quickly and they find unanimously
for Jennings and.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
They give them fifty dollars.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
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 US,
just like any of the citizen to make sure that
we get restitution and that we're treated like everybody else.
We are equal citizens. And so I think that's really

(03:57):
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 eighteen twenties and thirties,
women were not able to partake in public life the

(04:18):
way women are today. If they wanted to raise money
or support a cause, they had to do it passively
by you know, just raising the money then giving it
to a mail run organization.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
So they could decide how to spend it.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
But these literary societies also have another uptake to them,
and that women who were not really given an equal
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

(04:51):
their fellow members and get feedback and talk about the issues.
You know, what are the issues about slavery? What about
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 society says, 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,

(05:12):
if a woman was found after dusk out on the
streets in New York City, she was arrested as a prostitute,
didn't matter who she was. And there's cases of very
famous rich women is happening two 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

(05:33):
would go out in groups, and by eighteen thirty six,
millions of these petitions land in Congress, and Congress finally
says we've had it, we don't want any more of these.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
We get the message.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
So even without having a voice in politics, women were
having the 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 very young girl she
ends up being the youngest in the family, is in

(06:05):
eighteen thirty seven, they hold a what they call a
mental feast for the Colored American Newspaper, which is the
newspaper of record for African Americans. A few people know
that the very first African American newspapers started in New
York City. So this mental feast, these women invite men
in to hear all of different things that they're doing

(06:26):
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 the pale, as they used to say. So the
men are in the Cordendorff area and they see various
skits that they put on, and in one of the speeches,
Elizabeth's mother gets up and she reads this, a short

(06:48):
speech is about, you know, five hundred words so, and
it's called on the Improvement of the Mind. And if
you read it, it reads as true today as it
did almost two hundred years ago.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
And it's all.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
About how through education is how we will be able
to improve ourselves and become equals. And 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 Douglas and his
wife Anna. And that's something I don't think that he

(07:21):
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 stories, folks, If you love the stories we tell
about this great country, and especially the stories of America's
rich past. Know that all of our stories about American history,
from war to innovation, culture and faith are brought to

(07:43):
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 dot edu to learn more. And we returned

(08:10):
to 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 eighteen twenty one. Using the
money he received from his patent, an early form of

(08:31):
dry cleaning, he was 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, the.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Mother and father are setting a great example for the children.
She herself decides, you know, I'm gonna 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 Now, 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 sixteenth, eighteen fifty four.
During that time, the city was in the middle of
a week long heat wave. The shipyards were shut down,

(09:34):
people were collapsing from what they call brain fever at
the time, horses were dying in the streets. Tempers were flaring,
and you we have two young women rushing to get
the 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

(09:55):
and they see 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 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 twenty four passengers, but there's maybe
only ten people in there on an early, very hot Sunday.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
And they start to get on.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
They're about to sit down, and the conductor comes over
and sees who they are and says, you 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 elizabeys, look, we're in I'm just paraphrasing from what
she say.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
Look, we're in a hurry. I need to get the church.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
You know, we don't have time to keep waiting for
other cars, what have you. 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. We're not going to ride
in this car, basically, And so they go back and

(10:56):
forth and she says, well, look, I'm not getting off
this car. I need to get the 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 conductors now starting to
get really agitated. So there's kind of a kind of
a standoff between the two young women and this conductor.
The drivers there try and hold his horses. Everybodybody in

(11:18):
the car is starting to look at their watches and
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 us 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

(11:40):
in your car, but there's no room here. 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

(12:00):
throwing you right out of this car. And by this
time 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 have never been
insulted while going to church. And he just charges right

(12:22):
back and says, well, I was born in Ireland. I
don't care where you 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, imprudent fellow who insults genteel
people on their way to church. And then he says,

(12:44):
all right, that's it, I'm throwing you out. She tells
him not to lay a hand on her, and they
actually get in a battle. Elizabeth grabs 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 them, so the driver
ties up the horses comes back. They both pull her

(13:04):
off and she's now at the top of the stairs
of this horse car, which maybe 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 is screaming, don't murder her. She's
being murdered. Somebody help us. And finally Elizabeth's just laying

(13:25):
there on a cobblestone. She's bleeding and bruised, and she
finally stands up and they're getting ready. They kind of
clean their hands off and said, well, that's it, goodbye,
and Elizabeth just runs back.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Onto the horse car.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
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 conduct is shot and he yells 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

(14:00):
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 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

(14:22):
out on the street. They stopped the car and the
policeman goes over and says, all, what's the problem there
to conductor says, well, you know, this woman got on
the car. You know, I don't think anybody really wanted
it on here.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
And so the cop comes on and he says, does
anybody object to her being on this car?

Speaker 2 (14:40):
And nobody raised 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 off of
this car. You don't belong on this car, and he
starts poking with his I guess you would call it
a billy club today. He finally pushes her off and says, look,

(15:01):
don't cause any trouble. Don't think you can start. Don't
go back and start a riot, because we know will
find out who you are. And she says, I'll get
redressed for this, and the policeman laughs, well, you know,
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, is a

(15:22):
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 is now is enraged like,
oh my, how 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

(15:43):
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 visual He reads her
letter to the standing room 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

(16:08):
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. 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.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
And so her father takes out.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Eds and all these papers throughout New York and says,
you know, we are going to fight this, and we're
going to find it for everybody. Not just it's important
that my daughter gets restitution, but it's more important that
we get the right to ride public transportation settled once
and for all. And so he's really serious about this.
Like I said, he puts us out in a number

(16:52):
of newspapers across the state, and they decide that they're
going to have a lawsuit. The question is who would
take a lot lawsuit from an African American woman against
the powerful Third Avenue Railroad that in eighteen fifty four
makes over a million dollars in nickel firs. 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 Michaelreenda and 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, and they thought they

(17:35):
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 story. And we're

(18:08):
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

(18:29):
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 Mike Arenda.

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 America, Perkins. 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. You certainly have to be able to get

(19:07):
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 for that is Culver Erasmus Cover, a

(19:31):
lawyer from upstate New York and Vermont, ardent abolitionist his
whole life, won the Lemmings slave case in New York
City back in eighteen fifty two, just a few years before,
and I'm sure being on top of this situation. Thomas
Jennings knew of him, knew of his law firm well,
and he goes to Culver and they have discussions and

(19:53):
Cover 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 pab we 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 in May, 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

(20:15):
a young Chester author just graduated from law school and
now he is ready for his first case. Author then
does something very interesting and he takes advantage of the
new court system in New York State. And back in
eighteen forty seven, New York State decided to redo its constitution,

(20:35):
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.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
That's all gone.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
New York State was now going to have a unified
system where you went to courtrooms. He felt like you
were actually before a justice rather than some friend or
somebody who who came by every once in a while.
So you were now able to in New York State
bring a case any court you want to. And so
very smartly young author decides, well, I'm not going to

(21:12):
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 twenty second, eighteen
fifty five. And of course we all know what February
twenty second is George Washington's birthday. But as George Washington's birthday,

(21:34):
they still held courts, but it was a much more
raucous celebration and 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 fifing drum bands, of they're parades NonStop, people shooting
off cannons and fireworks and firearms. The balconies and the

(21:55):
rotunda of the city Hall are filled with people who
are 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

(22:18):
trial gets underway, and the lawyers from the Third Avenue
Railroad don't expect anything you have. They look at this
as a slam dunk. And in fact, when the conductor
and the driving get up they plead no contest. They say, yeah, sorry,
we did it, probably shouldn't.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
No, we didn't mean it.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
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 to agree with them,
and he's getting ready to hit his gavel, and then
all of a sudden, author, who is a very tall
and slender young man at the time, stands up and says,
your honor, and he thrusts his arm into the air

(22:54):
way high into the air, and he's holding this big,
heavy book. He says, your honor, I hold here the
statutes from eighteen twenty four, and they show that public
conveyances they are reliable and responsible for the actions of
their employees. And author gives the statutes to the Judge Rockwell,
who then gives his orders to the jury, and basically

(23:18):
he says that the company was liable for the actions
of their agents, whether committed carelessly, negligently, or wilfully or maliciously.
That they were common carriers and as 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,

(23:39):
nor by force of violence. And in case of such
expulsion or exclusion, the company was lible. And with those orders,
the jury goes out, and just like her father all
those years before, the all white jury comes back and
says Elizabeth has won her case, and she asks for
five hundred dollars, which is a lot of money back
in those days. They decide, as they say, for peculiar reasons,

(24:02):
to cut it down to twenty five and the judge
throws in another twenty five to pay off author's fees,
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 Greally, the owner and
editor at the Tribune, here's this, he actually takes the

(24:25):
notes from his reporter and he writes the article. He
calls it a wholesome verdict, and he says, from now on,
African Americans will be treated just like everybody else. That
have the same rights as everybody else to ride any
transportation in this state, whether it's a ferry, esteamboat a
horse car and I'm in the bus. So it's a
stunning victory. And right away a number of the railroads

(24:45):
there is something like a nine of them. Five of
them say yeah, well we'll comply with this, but there
are others say no, we'll fight it in court. We
won't do this until you force us to do it.
A little bit, 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

(25:08):
and in eighteen seventy five, Elizabeth started a woman's missionary
Association at Saint Phillip's as a way to support churches
in Haiti and Africa. So life goes on for Elizabeth
and for Chester author, who become 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.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
She ends up dying of Bright's disease, the same thing
that Author 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 in a repellate court in New York.
The Appellate Court is the Supreme Court. That's New York.

(26:05):
And by the way, a special thanks to Scott Levin
for gathering the audio in 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, two hundred

(26:27):
and fifty dollars was real money, and of course legal
fees were thrown into 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 in our Americans Stories.
Rule of law matters. It separates us from so many

(26:49):
other countries around the world, 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