Jessie Lee Garner

Jessie Lee Garner was an African American woman who, in the depths of Jim Crow segregation territory in Jackson, Mississippi, successfully sued the municipal bus company over being attacked by a white man who was seeking her seat in the African American section of the bus. An all-white jury awarded Garner damages of $1,000 (about $22,000 in 2024 dollars). This was a rare legal victory for a Black citizen of the American South in the white supremacist courts of the period, and is an example how attorneys for African Americans used state civil law to advance the civil rights of their clients before such juries.

Violent attack On August 31, 1936, Garner was six months pregnant and waiting for a bus outside Sutton's Ice Cream Parlor in Jackson. When the bus arrived, Garner took a seat in the section of the bus that was reserved for African Americans. As the bus followed its route, the other section of the bus became crowded, with all seats taken.

Court case Garner sued the Mississippi Power & Light Company (today part of Entergy), claiming negligence. Mississippi's Jim Crow laws mandated that buses and trains have "by a partition or adjustable screen... so as to secure separate accommodations for the white and colored races". Mississippi statute required "a partition constructed of metal, wood, strong cloth, or other material".

Rather than attack the constitutionality of Jim Crow in front of an all-white jury — the strategy of her attorneys was instead, to accept it as a set of laws meant to preserve peace between the races and to appeal to "the paternalist sentiments of the jurors". The approach succeeded. The bus company lost the case and the jury awarded Garner $1,000, both for her medical expenses and because she had "suffered great pain and mental anguish".

Mississippi Power & Light appealed the verdict to the Supreme Court of Mississippi, arguing that the lack of a partition was not the proximate cause of the attack, but on October 18, 1937, the Supreme Court affirmed the lower court decision. In its decision, Justice George H. Ethridge wrote that the "object of the law in requiring separation of the races... is to avoid outbreaks and conflicts which mar the public peace".