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.
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.