Sarah Mae Flemming

Sarah Mae Flemming Brown (June 28, 1933 – June 16, 1993) was an African-American woman who was expelled from a bus in Columbia, South Carolina , seventeen months before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat on an Alabama bus in 1955 . Flemming's lawsuit against the bus company played an important role later in the Parks case .

Early life Sarah Mae Flemming was born June 28, 1933, to Mack and Rosella Goodwin Flemming in Eastover, South Carolina. She grew up on the family's farm as one of seven siblings in the Jim Crow South, where racial segregation limited access to educational and economic opportunities. She did have the opportunity to complete the tenth or eleventh grade at Webber High School in Eastover before leaving school to work to support family responsibilities. She spent a year working for an uncle in Ohio before returning to South Carolina, where she moved in with a cousin and began working two jobs as a domestic worker, a field that often involved low wages and long hours for the workers, in Columbia, South Carolina A twenty-year old Flemming boarded a South Carolina Electric and Gas (SCE&G) bus to go to work . The driver challenged her for sitting in a "white-only" section and because she was so humiliated, she signaled to get off at the next stop. The bus driver blocked her attempt to exit through the front of the bus and punched her in the stomach as he ordered her out the rear door .

Local civil rights activists heard of ordeal and enlisted attorney Phillip Wittenberg, a white attorney in Columbia, to represent her. Flemming v. South Carolina Electric and Gas was filed on July 21, 1954, in U.S. District Court . Ms. Flemming appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and her case was argued on June 21, 1955 This decision would later be cited in the case of Rosa Parks. and on June 13, 1956, Judge Timmerman dismissed the case once again

Columbia SC 63, a civil rights group, celebrated the life of Sarah Mae Flemming Brown by hosting history tours in Eastover, South Carolina, as of 2025 . Eastover, South Carolina, Sarah Mae Flemming Brown's home, also hosts a "Sarah Mae Flemming Day" on June 22 in remembrance .