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I wanted to publicly thank all those who came out to hear New York author Amy Nathan share her story about the inspiration Sarah Louise Keys Evans was to her, and how she was inspired to write several books about Sarah. Two of those books will be published next year.

It was a very informative and inspirational afternoon as we learned more about Sarah’s life, and how her courage helped to abolish once and for all discrimination on interstate buses in this country.

I too shared my reflections of my relationship with Sarah. As a relative of Sarah, our conversations via telephone are something I will always cherish. I often told Sarah, I’m coming to visit you, and we can share photos of our relatives and the stories we heard sitting on the porches of our ancestors who once lived in Keysville. “I’ve got to record these stories” I’d tell Sarah. “Well, I’ll tell you even more things when you get here” she replied.

I made my plans to visit right before the Covid pandemic hit, and by the time I was ready to travel to Brooklyn, NY to see her, we both felt it wasn’t safe as the virus was still around. And regrettably, I never got to visit her. We still talked by phone until her health declined, and she went to live in a nursing home.

One of the things we talked about was how few people in Washington talked about her stance in becoming a Civil Rights leader. “Oh, honey” she said, “it wasn’t that they didn’t know. It was in all the newspapers and Jet Magazine.” (Jet magazine was an African American weekly magazine published from 1951-2014) “Folks down home was always afraid of the Ku Klux Klan and they were careful about what they talked about. You know the Ku Klux Klan was big in Washington at one time and folks back in the 1950’s and 60’s had not forgot that.”

Sarah herself was always concerned about how folks would react to her taking the stand she took and talked with reserve about it to people she trusted.

One of the last things I told Sarah was that I wanted to get a historic marker for her, and have it placed on the corner of Second and Respess Streets, where the Union Bus Station once stood. It was on that corner when Sarah stepped off the Carolina Trailways bus, that history was about to be made.

It was there her family met a visibly shaken Sarah by her ordeal at the Roanoke Rapids Bus Station. It was there her father David Keys, (who had helped to establish the Mother of Mercy church here in Washington so that Black Catholics would have a place to worship) encouraged Sarah to fight the discrimination she had just endured.

Also, a very special thank you to all those who joined me at the event and pledged to help get a marker for Sarah Louise Keys Evans.

We will be talking with City Council about how we can make that happen. Sarah deserves that honor in her hometown. She’s my hero.