We are very pleased to announce that another book indexed by Southwest Humanities has recently been published: Riding into History: The Surprising Story of Sarah Keys Evans and the Fight to Desegregate Bus Travel by Amy Nathan was released by Duke University Press on 24 March 2026. This assiduously researched book brings to light the remarkable yet often overlooked story of Sarah Keys Evans, a young Black Army private whose quiet act of resistance helped reshape civil rights law in the United States. In 1952, Keys refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on an interstate bus and was arrested—an incident that led to the landmark 1955 case Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. Drawing on extensive research and personal interviews, Nathan reconstructs both Keys’s life and the broader network of Black activism surrounding transportation segregation, showing how her case became a crucial legal precedent later used to enforce desegregation during the Freedom Rides.
The book is especially important for how it reshapes our understanding of the Civil Rights Movement. By centering a figure whose story predates and parallels that of Rosa Parks, it challenges simplified narratives that focus on a few iconic moments and instead highlights the cumulative, often under-recognized efforts (particularly those of Black women) that made legal and social change possible. n doing so, Riding into History contributes meaningfully to U.S. history, African American studies, legal history, and gender studies, emphasizing how individual acts of resistance intersect with institutional change. It also underscores the importance of recovering marginalized voices in historical scholarship, showing that pivotal transformations often depend on figures whose stories have yet to be fully told. For more information, please see the publisher’s website here.
SOUTHWEST HUMANITIES 