Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark

Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark (April 14, 1823 – December 21, 1892) was an African American educator, abolitionist, and early Civil Rights activist, whose defiance of "whites only" social spaces has been compared to Rosa Parks' actions in the 20th century.

[4] At the time of Clark's birth in 1823, Concord was open to previously enslaved people (Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783) and was well known for being an abolitionist's stronghold.

In 1857, Clark married John W. Jackson, a free Black gardener from Delaware, but in 1863, she listed herself as a widow when she applied to become a Freedmen's school teacher.

[5] Throughout her life, Clark signed petitions, including the demand for equal rights for Native Americans and desegregation of Massachusetts trains and Boston schools.

After her inspiring and challenging youth in Concord, Massachusetts, Ellen moved to Boston, where she became a teacher and joined the city’s social justice community.

"[8] Utilizing her passport as proof of her freedom and full citizenship and a free person,[9] Clark taught in Freedmen's schools in Port Deposit, Maryland and Virginia, often facing hostile racism.

If they attack you be careful to stand your ground and they will leave you, but if you run they will follow.”[10] In 1870, due to funding issues, the AMA discontinued their contract with Clark, but she soon found more teaching opportunities in North Carolina with a Quaker organization.

[3] Intending to test train depot segregation in light of the 1866 Civil Rights act, Jackson and Anderson brought suit against the station master, an employee of the Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Wilmington Railroad, who had thrown them out of the waiting room.