Born in 1921, the eleventh of thirteen children, Ray was raised in an all-Black community in Wauhatchie, Tennessee. As a result of her secluded upbringing, Ms. Ray was at first spared the sting of Jim Crow segregation. Once in her twenties she moved to Detroit with her first husband in search of a better life. She found her new home disappointing: “I thought I’d find absolute freedom…But day after day, year after year, I discovered it wasn’t so.”

In June 1945, Sarah Elizabeth Ray was the only Black woman enrolled in a secretarial class of forty at a Detroit High School. On the morning of June 21, Ray and twelve of her classmates boarded Columbia for a celebratory graduation trip to Bob-Lo: “The man who was taking the tickets saw my brown hand and looked up at me, but he didn’t say anything.” After taking their seats on the top deck, “two men, one dressed in uniform and one in plainclothes, came toward where we were sitting […] They asked one of the white girls […] sitting next to me if she knew me.” When Ray’s teacher asked the men what they wanted, “they said I could not go along with the girls because I was colored.” Initially Ray refused to leave the boat, but after one of the men instructed a group of waiters “to throw this woman off”, she left. Before leaving, she had the presence of mind to take the names of the men who had approached her. Ray then threw the eighty-five cent fare back at the officers and left the ship. Ray then went to the NAACP, where she filed a criminal complaint against the Bob-lo Company. 

The local courts ruled in Ms. Ray’s favor. The owners of the line appealed to the Michigan State Supreme Court, which subsequently also ruled in Ms. Ray’s favor. The Bob-lo Company then appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Court to hold the state’s civil rights act unconstitutional because it infringed upon the power of Congress to regulate interstate and foreign commerce. In a historic ruling, The Court upheld the Michigan civil rights. Bob-Lo Excursion Co. v. People of the State of Michigan, 333 U.S. 28 affirmed the ruling of the lower courts, signaling the Supreme Court’s willingness to protect the civil rights of Black Americans. This case would prove crucial in paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education.

Ms Sarah Elizabeth Ray’s story may be less known than that of Rosa Parks’ that followed ten years later, but their stories have remarkable similarities. Each woman refused to accept her limited freedom and each demonstrated unbelievable courage and tenacity in propelling the Civil Rights Movement forward.

We at The SS Columbia Project believe it’s important that this story get told. The story is not a secret, but for whatever reason it has not reached the general public in the way we feel properly honors Sarah Elizabeth Ray. We would like the story to get the attention it deserves and allow people to do with it what they will. A physical landmark will allow us to draw more attention to the story than any article or art piece can on its own.