[1] Public transit aboard stagecoaches, streetcars, railroads, and steamboats was regularly segregated by race in the early nineteenth century.
Black and white abolitionists who crusaded against southern slavery also challenged racial prejudice and discrimination in the "free" northern states.
[2] Their near decade-long crusade was completed in 1864 when another black woman, Ellen Anderson, successfully sued a policeman who had aided in her ejection from a "white's only" streetcar.
[3] The Legal Rights Association pioneered long-lasting practices of minority-rights advocacy that subsequent civil-rights and civil-liberties activists have used.
[4] This included waging public-opinion campaigns, lobbying officials, fundraising, organizing the local community, civil disobedience, and initiating "test cases" to challenge racial discrimination in court.