In 1854, Graham insisted on her right to ride on an available New York City streetcar at a time when all such companies were private and most operated segregated cars.

She is known for penning the speech 10-year-old Elizabeth Jennings delivered, "On the Improvement of the Mind," at a meeting of the Ladies Literary Society of New York (founded 1834).

[4] The literary society was founded by New York's elite black women to promote self-improvement through community activities, reading, and discussion.

The importance of improving the mind was a consistent theme that developed in members of New York's Black Elite in the post-Revolutionary period.

Like the nearly obsolete omnibus lines, the streetcars were owned by private companies, which regularly barred access to their service on the basis of race.

The owners and drivers could easily refuse service to passengers of African descent or demand racially segregated seating.

Horace Greeley's New York Tribune commented on the incident in February 1855: She got upon one of the company's cars last summer, on the Sabbath, to ride to church.

The conductor undertook to get her off, first alleging the car was full; when that was shown to be false, he pretended the other passengers were displeased at her presence; but (when) she insisted on her rights, he took hold of her by force to expel her.

The incident sparked an organized movement among black New Yorkers to end racial discrimination on streetcars, led by notables such as Jennings's father, Rev.

Her case was handled by the firm's 24-year-old junior partner Chester A. Arthur, future president of the United States.

In his charge to the jury, Brooklyn Circuit Court Judge William Rockwell declared: "Colored persons if sober, well-behaved and free from disease, had the same rights as others and could neither be excluded by any rules of the company, nor by force or violence."

The last case was a challenge by a black woman named Ellen Anderson, a widow of a fallen United States Colored Troops soldier, a fact that won public support for her.

With the assistance of a white undertaker, the Grahams slipped through mob-filled streets and buried their child in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn.

The Grahams left Manhattan with her mother to live with her sister Matilda in Monmouth County, New Jersey, in or near the town of Eaton.