Eastern Carolina Christian College and Seminary
ECCCS, in Roanoke Rapids, NC, received an Inclusive Public Art Initiative grant from ZSR.
Eastern Carolina Christian College and Seminary (ECCCS), and additional community organizations, have partnered together to tell the story of Mrs. Sarah Keys Evans – a young, African American woman in the Women’s Army Corps, who refused to move to the back of the bus on August 2, 1952, was arrested, and whose legal battle was seminal in the fight for equal rights.
This event took place at the bus terminal on Roanoke Avenue in Roanoke Rapids, NC, while she was traveling dressed in her official Women’s Army Corps uniform, from New Jersey to her hometown of Washington, NC. On September 1, 1953, Sarah Keys became the first Black petitioner to bring a complaint before the US Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) on a Jim Crow bus matter, two months before Thurgood Marshall made the second round of oral arguments in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.
The resulting breakthrough civil rights case, Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (1955) was the first occurrence in which the ICC broke with its history of adherence to the Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” doctrine. This ruling was publicly announced six days before Rosa Parks’ historic defiance of Jim Crow laws on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus and the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts of 1955. While the story of Sarah Keys has generally been eclipsed by the events in Montgomery, her activism was a necessary step and key success in ultimately dismantling Jim Crow transportation laws in the South in 1961.
Working in collaboration with local Enfield, NC artist Napolean Hill, the artwork plaza, themed “Closing the Circle,” tells this important, yet under told story through eight chronological mural panels and two bronze plaques, mounted on two semi-circular brick walls. This project is located in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park, an active community space in Roanoke Rapids.
Visit their project website at http://sarahkevansproject.com/
Mrs. Sarah Keys Evans on her wedding day in 1958. Photo courtesy of Mrs. Sarah Keys Evans
Mrs. Keys Evans is honored at The Women’s Memorial in Arlington Va. Photo courtesy of Mrs. Sarah Keys Evans
Artist Napolean Hill completes his first draft concept sketches. Photo courtesy of the SKE Project Committee
Artist Napolean Hill, working on a portrait of Mrs. Sarah Keys Evans, and her father. Photo courtesy of Morgan Potts
A group of multigenerational community members gather with the SKE Project Team. Photo courtesy of the SKE Project Committee
The SKE Project Team breaks ground at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park. Photo courtesy of Morgan Potts
Sarah Keys Evans Plaza is near completion. Stay tuned and check back soon for the final reveal of the finished artwork! Photo courtesy of Morgan Potts
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