Cecil Ivory

Personal life Ivory was born to an African American Baptist family in Arkadelphia, Arkansas on March 3, 1921. He was the third of four children, and his father died of a fever while Ivory was a toddler. As a fourteen-year-old, he received a significant back injury from a fall from a pecan tree, but taught himself to walk again since the family could not afford medical treatment. The injury may have caused a blood clot that later permanently disabled him.

Activism Ivory led many protests against segregation in Rock Hill. He was the NAACP chapter president of the city from 1953 until his death in 1961, and organized sit-ins and bail postings for arrested activists.

Bus Boycott In July 1957, he organized a bus boycott which kicked off a wave of civil rights activism among the city's black population. After a 24-year-old black woman, Adelene Austin White, was kicked off of a Star Transit Co. bus for sitting next to a white woman, Ivory called an NAACP meeting to coordinate a boycott and met with Austin personally.

This did not deter Ivory, and he continued to organize further sit-ins. He also created and participated in marches, rallies and pickets downtown while in his wheelchair. After being denied service and threatened by the store's manager and a police officer, he was eventually arrested. As an angry mob of white men followed and cursed at the cars, Ivory led the riders to his house and served them dinner. Charles Person, the youngest of the 1961 Freedom Riders, wrote in his memoir that Ivory's ability to "stand up to bigotry from a wheelchair" gave him the courage to continue on the Freedom Ride.