Gertrudejane Holliday Stone, a Black 89-year-old Houston woman, has a story to share about a trip she took on the “Big Boy” train in 1955. The train, one of only eight remaining from 1941, is currently on a 10-city tour and recently stopped in Houston at the Amtrak station on Washington Avenue. In the same year that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Stone did the same thing while aboard the “Big Boy” train, which was headed for Houston.
According to ABC 13, in December 1955, while traveling back to Houston from Tennessee’s Fisk University, where she was attending college at the time, Stone defied not only the orders of the conductor but also the orders of the police.
“When he (the conductor) got to me, he said, ‘Go to the Jim Crow coach.’ I said, ‘I’m not moving,’ and he became very frustrated at my answer,” Stone recounted to the outlet.
Stone continued, “I wasn’t, I guess you would say, disturbed at their response to me, but my response to them, I guess, was off of the chart at that time.”
Stone concluded, saying that she decided to take a stand against injustice that day on the train. “I guess in my mind, I said, ‘Enough is enough,’ and you know there’s a famous quote that says, ‘Refuse to die until you have done something for humanity.’ At that time, I was very young, but I was trying to do something for humanity.”
Stone previously discussed the events with Fox 26 in 2017, describing the ride as “a train ride from H-E-L-L.”
According to the outlet, Stone was berated and taunted by multiple passengers and train employees, but she refused to move.
Stone told the outlet that the brutal murder of Emmett Till earlier that year motivated her to remain in her seat despite the furious whites on the train.
“You get to a point where you say enough is enough. If not me, then who? If not now, then when,” Stone told Fox 26.
According to the
outlet, Stone eventually became the first Black salesperson at Pomeroy’s Department Store, the first Black person to chair the Houston Public Library Board, and the owner of Houston’s National African American Museum.RELATED CONTENT: Rosa Parks Act Seeks To Honor The Late Civil Rights Activist With A Federal Holiday