Civil Rights Pioneer Elizabeth Jennings Honored with Downtown Street Sign

The "Elizabeth Jennings Place" street sign is unveiled Nov. 12 at the corner of Spruce Street and Park Row. Photo courtesy of the Downtown Alliance

Civil rights pioneer Elizabeth Jennings was celebrated Thursday with the unveiling of the Elizabeth Jennings Place street sign at the corner of Spruce Street and Park Row. 

It was near that corner, in 1854, that Jennings allowed herself to be forcibly removed from a New York City streetcar, paving the way, in 1860, for their desegregation. Her groundbreaking act of civil disobedience preceded, by 100 years, Rosa Parks’ famed refusal to give up her seat in the whites-only section of a Montgomery, Ala., bus.

Jennings, a 24-year-old Black school teacher, boarded a Third Avenue Railroad horsecar at what is now Park Row, across the street from City Hall Park. She refused the order of the conductor to deboard and was physically removed by the conductor and a police officer.

A 2007 campaign by PS 361 students led to the corner being co-named for Jennings. But the sign disappeared recently, prompting Pace University’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program to team up with the Downtown Alliance and have a new sign made.

Students from Pace and P.S. 361 gathered for the ceremony with Downtown Alliance President Jessica Lappin, Councilman Christopher Marte, and New York Transit Museum Director Regina Shepherd.