Sarah Louise Keys, born in 1929 in Clark's Neck, North Carolina, was one of seven children of David and Vivian Keys. She enlisted in the Women's Army Corp in 1951 and, after basic training at Fort Lee, Virginia, received a permanent assignment as a receptionist at the Army base hospital at Fort Dix, New Jersey. After becoming eligible for leave on August 1, 1952, she boarded an interstate bus in Trenton, New Jersey, headed home to Washington, North Carolina, wearing her military uniform. Around midnight in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, a new driver ordered her to move to the back and surrender her seat to a white marine. Knowing her rights under Morgan v. Virginia, the 1946 Supreme Court case that ruled passenger segregation illegal on interstate travel, she refused to leave the midway seat she had occupied since earlier in the trip. Southern carriers had continued operating through legal loopholes, and Keys was arrested by the Roanoke Rapids Police Department, jailed for 13 hours, fined $25.00 upon release, and placed on another Carolina Coach bus the next day with orders to remain in her seat until reaching her destination. Encouraged by her father, she returned to Roanoke Rapids and filed suit against the Carolina Coach Company. Her legal fight became a seminal civil rights case when Keys v. Carolina Coach Company in 1955 led the Interstate Commerce Commission to break with its adherence to the Plessy v. Ferguson separate but equal doctrine, apply the 1946 Supreme Court ruling to private bus companies as well as public transportation, and forbid segregation on interstate transportation. Issued just weeks before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, the ruling by Sarah Louise Keys Evans was an important step in dismantling Jim Crow transportation in the South.