Streetcar to Justice: How Elizabeth Jennings Won the Right to Ride in New York by Amy Hill Hearth

Abstract

Reviewed by: Streetcar to Justice: How Elizabeth Jennings Won the Right to Ride in New York by Amy Hill Hearth Elizabeth Bush Hearth, Amy Hill Streetcar to Justice: How Elizabeth Jennings Won the Right to Ride in New York. Greenwillow/HarperCollins, 2018 [144p] illus. with photographs Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-06-267360-2 $19.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-06-267593-4 $7.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 4-7 Even in the free state of New York in 1854, the possibility that black schoolteacher Elizabeth Jennings would be allowed onto a horse-drawn streetcar in Manhattan was a roll of the dice, dependent on the disposition of the conductor and the goodwill of its passengers. On the morning of July 16, luck was not with Jennings, and when she literally clung to her ride, she was physically dragged off the conveyance, battered, and hauled into a police station. This outrage resulted in a lawsuit in which greenhorn attorney Chester A. Arthur (yes, that pre-Presidency Arthur) took her case and won before an all-white male jury. The episode is compelling and it certainly merits retelling in light of racial discrimination suits far into the next century. Unfortunately, documentation is thin due, as Hearth explains, to loss of records in a fire in the Albany Statehouse and the overshadowing of the case by national attention on the Fugitive Slave Act. This leaves Hearth with the task of filling in gaps with conjecture and stretching the action out through a heavy load of historical contextualization, which is arguably useful but drains the tension from Jennings' ordeal. Period illustration is included, as well as substantial back matter [End Page 204] comprising bibliography, notes, a timeline and notes on Jennings's life, suggested reading, a list of related New York locations, illustration credits, and an index. EB Copyright © 2017 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois