Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a black woman whose refusal in 1944 to give up her seat to a white passenger is seen as a precursor to the US civil rights movement, has died at the age of 90, reports said Monday.
Kirkaldy's determination, more than a decade before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a city bus to allow a white person to sit down, led to her arrest and incarceration and eventually to the Supreme Court, which said the law used against her was unconstitutional.
Kirkaldy, nee Morgan, was taking a Greyhound bus from her mother's home in the state of Virginia to Baltimore in neighboring Maryland.
A few miles after she boarded, several white passengers got on, and Morgan and another black passenger were ordered by the driver to move to the back of the bus.
When they refused, the driver stopped the bus and called law enforcement officials, who showed up with an arrest warrant.
Morgan is said to have thrown it out the window, and according to some reports, kicked the sheriff sent to arrest her.
Morgan contested her case with the help of a team of lawyers including Thurgood Marshall, who went on to become the first black appointed to the Supreme Court.
The case went to the Supreme court, which ruled in 1946 that the law requiring Morgan to move to the back of the bus was unconstitutional.
The incident had strong parallels with another which occurred 11 years later, when Rosa Parks refused in 1955 to move to the back of a city bus in the southern US state of Alabama.
Both are seen as sparks that ignited the fuse on the then nascent drive for equal rights for blacks in the United States.
