Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

From Sarah Keys Evans Public Arts Committee

Members of the Sarah Keys Evans Planning Committee and the Roanoke Rapids Parks and Recreation are excited to celebrate the Fifth Sarah Keys Evans Day.  A celebration will be held at the Sarah Keys Evans Plaza in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Park on Virginia Avenue and Wyche Street in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2024 at 5 p.m.

This year, the committee will acknowledge the 2024 Sarah Keys Evans Trailblazers Recipients. These individuals and organizations have worked and dedicated their lives for the betterment of health disparities, religious and mental guidance, educational and environmental advancements, social justice, equity and peace in the Roanoke Valley Area of North Carolina and beyond.

The recipients are:  Rev. Dawn Daly-Mack, Mrs. Patricia Peele, Mrs. Carolyn Ross-Holmes, Mr. Antonio Squire, Rural Health Group, Inc. – Mrs. Yvonne Long-Gee. CEO and Dr. Kesha Rooks, COO, Epsilon Sigma Lambda Chapter, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., Young Sarah Keys Evans Young Trailblazer to be acknowledged is Mr. Rodney D. Pierce. The Safe Haven Award Recipient is Oak Grove Baptist Church in Littleton, North Carolina and a Special Presentation of the Sarah Keys Evans Fortitude and Valor Awards will be presented.  Congressman Don Davis will extend greetings and Mrs. Julie Graves, niece of Mrs. Sarah Keys Evans will give words of gratitude on behalf of her family.

Sarah Keys Evans died on Nov. 16, 2023.

The public is invited to come out, bring a lawn chair, and enjoy the festivities for the day.

The Sarah Keys Evans Plaza was unveiled at the Martin King, Jr. Community Park in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina on Aug. 1, 2021, 68 years from the date Ms. Keys was arrested in Roanoke Rapids, for not giving up her seat to a white marine. The Sarah Keys Evans Project Planning Committee was instrumental in acquiring the funds to construct the plaza. It was funded by a grant provided by the Public Arts Inclusive Project of Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. The murals were designed and painted by Mr. Napoleon Hill and the plaza was constructed by Mr. David Putney.

With this grant, Eastern Carolina Christian College & Seminary collaborated with other community organizations to tell the story of Mrs. Sarah Keys Evans. She was a young, African American woman in the Women’s Army Corps, who refused to move to the back of an interstate Bus in Roanoke Rapids on Aug. 2, 1952. The Roanoke Rapids City Police arrested her. Key’s legal battle was seminal in the fight for equal rights. The resulting breakthrough civil rights case, Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (1955), was the first occurrence in which the Interstate Commerce Commission broke with its history of adherence to the Plessy v. Ferguson “separate but equal” doctrine. The Ruling was publicly announced six days before Rosa Parks’ historic defiance of Jim Crow laws on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. This was the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts of 1955. While the story of Sarah Keys Evans has been eclipsed by the events in Montgomery, her activism was a necessary step and key success in ultimately dismantling Jim Crow transportation laws in the South in 1961.

For more information, Contact the Committee members:  Dr. Charles McCollum, Sr.  Dr. Ervin Griffin, Sr., Dr. Georgette B. Kimball, Ms. Ophelia Gould-Faison, and Mr. John Simeon or view the website Sarahkevansproject.com.