The second-floor courtroom of Saluda’s historic courthouse was filled to capacity on Saturday morning, as people came from far and wide to pay tribute to Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, both for the private woman herself and the very public stand she took that forever altered Jim Crow segregation and paved the way for the civil rights victories of the 1950s and ’60s.

The courtroom itself played a big part in the story that was told during the 2½-hour ceremony. In this room that contains plaques and portraits commemorating Middlesex County’s Confederate soldiers, history of a different kind played out some 68 years ago.

It was on this spot in 1944 that a 27-year-old Irene Morgan was found guilty of refusing to give up her seat on a Greyhound bus to a white passenger. With the help of the NAACP, the case was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, with that body ruling that segregation on interstate transportation was unconstitutional.

Saturday’s ceremony was held to unveil a new state highway marker commemorating the landmark case, and the event attracted a number of dignitaries including Benjamin Jealous, national president and CEO of the NAACP, and Kwame Lillard, president of the African American Cultural Alliance, as well as several other men and women who, like Lillard, traveled on buses throughout the South in 1961 to challenge the southern states’ segregation laws. These Freedom Riders trace their origins and inspiration to Irene Morgan and they were on hand as a show of respect for her courage.

“This has been a long time coming,” said Middlesex County NAACP president Mark Lomax, speaking of the recognition for Irene Morgan. “We really appreciate how Middlesex has turned out for this occasion.”

From that June day in 1944 when she was arrested to the Supreme Court’s decision two years later, Irene Morgan refused to back down to the injustice. “She didn’t quit. She didn’t give up,” Lomax said. “This is an example of real citizenship.” And, in the end, she “changed how a nation does business.”

Robin Washington, editor of Minnesota’s Duluth News Tribune and producer of the PBS documentary “You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow,” spoke about the route Irene Morgan took from Hayes Store up the George Washington Memorial Highway to her eventual arrest in Saluda. While he said he had nothing against George Washington, “for me, the route here is the Irene Morgan Highway.”

In speaking of Irene Morgan’s transformative act, Lillard quoted from Jimi Hendrix: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Morgan, he said, “lit the fire for the modern civil rights movement.”

A portion of Washington’s documentary was shown, including his interview with Irene Morgan, after which Lillard said it was a “short reminder of why we’re here and where we’ve come as a people.”

George Gresham, president of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, spoke about growing up in a segregated Middlesex County. “We’ve come a long way, as a people and as a society, both black and white … We’ll never turn down that road again.”

Gresham introduced Jealous, telling a story about the NAACP leader’s arrival on Saturday. He had flown across the country to Washington, D.C., and was hurrying down Route 17 when he was pulled over by an officer between Tappahannock and Saluda. Ironically, he said, he was black.

“We have come a long way,” Gresham said. “That black sheriff gave him a ticket anyway,” he added.

“She inspired a generation of young people,” Jealous said of Irene Morgan. “My mom was one of them,” he added, speaking of his mother growing up in Petersburg.

Jealous said that the courage that Irene Morgan demonstrated needs to be replicated in the youth of today. “We must raise children who are courageous enough,” he said, to continue to make the words of the Pledge of Allegiance, which declares this nation to be “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” be not an aspiration, but a reality—to “make America more like what America claims to be.”

America, in its earliest days, wasn’t founded on strict racial divides, Jealous said. In 1647, he said, the penalty for interracial couples was for both parties to wear white robes and stand in the church door … “which is to say that lynch mobs came later.”

“There is a greater human norm,” Jealous said, one where men can look one another in the eye and are “able to recognize that they are both human beings … equally deserving of the rights and privileges, not that the Constitution guarantees, but that God guarantees.”

The Rev. Frederick R. Carter, whose father was president of the Tri-County NAACP that came to Irene Morgan’s aid in 1944, delivered the keynote address.

Carter, pastor of Gloucester’s Shepherdsville Baptist Church, pointed out that Irene Morgan wasn’t the first person to challenge segregation laws concerning transportation. He spoke of an 1878 Supreme Court case, Hall vs. De Cuir, which upheld racial segregation, but on very narrow legal grounds.

So, to avoid testing these laws, and making it a federal case, local judges would routinely find the person accused of violating the law guilty of disorderly conduct instead.

In the Irene Morgan case, he said, Judge Catesby Graham Jones was forced into a corner. “He did not anticipate that young Spotswood Robinson (the NAACP lawyer) would do the thing that no defense lawyer ever does: ask for the conviction of his client. He and Oliver Hill contended that the $100 fine for kicking the sheriff and fighting his deputies, which had already been paid, precluded any further prosecution of Mrs. Morgan as double jeopardy,” Carter said.

Judge Jones was faced with either convicting her of an offense which could be challenged by the federal courts, or letting her escape Virginia law, Carter said. “He was hoisted upon his own petard … He was forced to convict Mrs. Morgan and order her to pay the $10 fine.”

Carter pointed out that the courtroom itself was an example of institutionalized apartheid. The room had two separate entrances and two separate staircases, one for blacks and the other for whites. The jury box and the prosecutor’s desk were on the white side of the room.

“It is hard to contend that any colored person could get an unbiased trial in the room,” he said.

Carter contrasted the case of Irene Morgan with the more famous incident in Birmingham, Ala., 11 years later with Rosa Parks. While Parks, secretary of the local NAACP, was set up to test that state’s segregation laws, Irene Morgan did not seek out arrest.

Irene Morgan, a quiet Seventh Day Adventist, discouraged by her faith from causing discord, had been recovering from surgery. “The last thing on her mind was a confrontation,” Carter said. “She simply could not stand for seven hours.”

While the incident of July 16, 1944 was the moment that turned Irene Morgan into a civil rights pioneer, Carter said there is much more to the story of her life. She went from being a high school dropout to earning a master’s degree, from being a maid to owning a maid service. “She fed poor strangers on holidays, and once rescued a child from a burning building,” Carter said. All the while, he said, she never forgot Gloucester County and her family.

“Today, the forces of reactionary hate are still around,” Carter said. He said there are those who are seeking to destroy free public education with private school vouchers, and destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid with privatization. “They hate government … of the people, by the people, for the people,” he said. “They want to destroy the sacred right to vote” with voter suppression laws.

“They hate and disrespect our president because of his race,” Carter said, adding “tell the truth and shame the devil.”

“We owe it to Irene Morgan to maintain her values and her heritage and pass them on to our descendants,” Carter said, in urging everyone to vote. “We have come too far to turn back now.”

Janine Bacquie, granddaughter of Irene Morgan, spoke on behalf of the family. Born in poverty in 1917, Irene Morgan was forced to drop out of school, but “she went on to be with God in victory.” It was a victory not just in the Supreme Court, but in her life, as Morgan raised herself up through education and hard work. “She was also a very loving person, gentle and kind,” Bacquie said.

Bacquie thanked former Gov. Tim Kaine, who was the first person to call with condolences after Irene Morgan died in 2007. And she thanked the unwavering support of the NAACP—”full circle, you’ve been here for 70 years.”

“She very much loved her family,” Bacquie said of her grandmother, adding that Irene Morgan has been mischaracterized in the news media as being “feisty” for her struggle with the sheriff and his deputy. “She really was gentle and kind.”

“She voted … (and) she would be very upset what’s going on in this country with voter suppression,” Bacquie said. “She really had a strong sense of pride as a black woman.”

Bacquie encouraged everyone to learn from Irene Morgan’s example. “How many of you would have the same courage she had that day?” she asked.

“Take a stand” when you are faced with your own “Irene Morgan moment,” Bacquie said. “You are very powerful.”