Sarah Mae Flemming
{{More citations needed|date=October 2009}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Sarah Mae Flemming Brown
| image = Sarah Mae Flemming.jpg
| image_size =
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name = Sarah Mae Flemming
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1933|06|28}}
| birth_place = Eastover, South Carolina
| death_date =
| death_place = Eastover, South Carolina
| death_cause =
| resting_place = Eastover, South Carolina
| resting_place_coordinates =
| known_for = Civil Rights Activism
| occupation = Domestic worker
| spouse = John Brown
| children = 3
| website =
| footnotes =
}}
Sarah Mae Flemming Brown (June 28, 1933 – June 16, 1993Birth and death dates from Social Security Death Index for Sarah M. Brown, deceased 1993 with last residence of Eastover, South Carolina.) 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 {{convert|188|acre|km2|adj=on}} farm and completed the tenth or eleventh grade at Webber High School in Eastover before leaving school to work. 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 in Columbia, South Carolina.
Civil rights activism
On June 22, 1954,{{cite web|title=Civil Rights Timeline|url=http://www.columbiasc63.com/civil-rights-timelinee/|website=www.columbiasc63.com|publisher=Columbia SC 63|access-date=9 May 2017}} Flemming boarded a bus to go to work. She took the only empty seat, which she believed began the rows in which black riders were allowed to sit. 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.{{cite web|last1=Brewer|first1=Frenche|title=USC historians want South Carolinians to know their civil rights history|url=http://www.sc.edu/news/newsarticle.php?nid=5766|publisher=University of South Carolina|access-date=31 December 2015|date=January 2, 2013}}
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 {{Citation|title=Flemming v. South Carolina Electric and Gas Company|date=1955|url=https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=5387370963638702540&q=flemming+v.+south+carolina+electric+and+gas&hl=en&as_sdt=6,31&as_vis=1|volume=224|pages=752|access-date=2020-04-08}} was filed on July 21, 1954, in U.S. District Court. The allegation was that Flemming's Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection had been violated. On February 16, 1955, Federal District Judge George Bell Timmerman, Sr. dismissed the case. Ms. Flemming appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and her case was argued on June 21, 1955. The Fourth Circuit reversed Judge Timmerman on July 14, 1955, and remanded the case for further proceedings.[http://openjurist.org/224/f2d/752 Flemming v. South Carolina Electric and Gas Company], 224 F.2d 752 (1955).
SCE&G appealed the decision of the Appeals Court. On April 23, 1956, the United States Supreme Court refused to review the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision{{cite news |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=rWdgAAAAIBAJ&pg=2325%2C5083550 |access-date=2014-05-12 |agency=AP |title=Bus Segregation Litigation Goes Back to Districts |date=1956-04-26 |work=Wilmington Morning Star}}South Carolina Elec. & Gas Co. v. Flemming, 351 U.S. 901, 76 S.Ct. 692, 100 L.Ed. 1439 (1956). and on June 13, 1956, Judge Timmerman dismissed the case once again. Mr. Wittenberg decided not to handle a second appeal and turned the case over to Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter of the NAACP. For the third trial, Lincoln Jenkins, Jr. and Matthew J. Perry represented Ms. Flemming and the jury quickly found in the bus company's favor, but by that time the Montgomery bus boycott and the decision in Browder v. Gayle had been rendered, so a third appeal was not filed.
Later life
During her legal case, Sarah Mae Flemming married John Brown of Gaston County, North Carolina. The couple had three children.
Sarah Mae Flemming Brown died of a heart attack brought on by diabetes on June 16, 1993, just before her 60th birthday. She was buried in the Goodwill Baptist Church cemetery in Eastover, South Carolina.
In 2005, a documentary entitled Before Rosa: The Unsung Contribution Of Sarah Mae Flemming aired on PBS stations across the United States.{{cite news |title=Film hails Sarah Mae Flemming |work=The State |date=2005-04-07 |page=A1 |quote="Before Rosa" airs at 10 p.m. and explains how - 17 months before Rosa Parks took her stand against segregation on city buses in Montgomery, Ala. -Flemming challenged segregation on SCE&G buses in Columbia. }}
Further reading
- {{cite book |editor1-first=William Lewis |editor1-last=Burke |editor2-first=Belinda |editor2-last=Gergel |title=Matthew J. Perry: The Man, His Times, and His Legacy |year=2004 |publisher=University of South Carolina Press |isbn=1-57003-534-2 |chapter=Before Rosa Parks: The Case of Sarah Mae Flemming }}