NOVA Parks News

Fairfax Station, Va. (June 2, 2026) — NOVA Parks and Howard University announce the release of a new documentary about female students at Howard University who challenged Virginia’s Jim Crow laws by refusing to sit at the back of a bus 11 years before Rosa Parks’ pivotal role in the civil rights movement. Angela L. Jones, Erma D. McLemore, Marianne Musgrave, and B. Ruth Powell endured arrest and harassment as they launched a pivotal challenge to legal segregation that helped lead to the elimination of discrimination on public transportation. 

“I’m so proud to help tell this powerful story of strength and determination,” said NOVA Parks Executive Director Justin Wilson. “Once I heard about the research that had been uncovered in connection to Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, I knew we had to record it to help share it widely to inspire others – just as I have been inspired.” 

The video “The Student Bus Protest That Challenged Jim Crow” features the research and storytelling of NOVA Parks Historian Paul McCray and Howard University Historian Sonja Woods, as well as personal accounts from Styllene Curtis Boyd, a daughter of one of the women involved in the protest.  

On Sunday, May 14, 1944, Caroline Ware, constitutional history and social science professor at Howard University, hosted a picnic for friends and several of her students at her home near Vienna, Virginia. Fondly called “The Farm” by Ware and her husband, the 95 acres of land would be donated by the couple to NOVA Parks in 1980 and named Meadowlark Botanical Gardens. 

After the picnic, eight of the students boarded a bus for their return trip to Howard University in Washington, DC. Four of the women sat in front seats, despite being directed to sit at the back by the driver. The driver called the police, who told them to move or be arrested. They refused and their protest began. 

The women were arrested and Ware arranged for legal counsel for the students with the NAACP, raised their bail and offered “The Farm” as surety. Their NAACP attorney argued that interstate law would apply since there was no federal law requiring Black passengers to sit at the rear of a bus, but the argument was not successful, and they were found guilty.  

Before their case was appealed at the state level, the Fairfax Commonwealth Attorney dropped all charges against the women because he feared that the case would be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Jim Crow law would be overturned. A year later, a similar case in Virginia reached the Supreme Court, and the Jim Crow transportation law was overruled and no longer applied to buses coming in or out of Virginia.  

"I was immediately intrigued when I learned about these remarkable events, but I was not surprised. What these young women did in 1944, refusing to yield their seats, accepting arrest, and forcing a legal confrontation that ultimately helped dismantle Jim Crow transportation laws, tracks with the tradition of Howard women as fearless and determined for justice and social change,” said Moorland-Spingarn Research Center Executive Director Dr. Benjamin Talton. “The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center exists precisely to ensure that stories like this one are brought to the public's attention. I am pleased that NOVA Parks launched this historic initiative and partnered with Howard University to bring it to fruition." 

The Howard University students were arrested 79 years after the first Juneteenth on June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers told 250,000 enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, that the Civil War was over, and they were therefore free. The Emancipation Proclamation had freed slaves in 1863, but it was not enforced until long after in many places. Celebrated since the late 1800s across the United States, Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021. 

NOVA Parks and the Fairfax County NAACP will host their Fifth Annual Bull Run Juneteenth Commemoration on Saturday, June 13, from 3 to 5 p.m. with words of hope, music, and a community ice cream social. The annual event commemorates the largest private emancipation prior to the Civil War and the lives of the enslaved and their descendants. The event will take place at the site of the emancipation at Bull Run Regional Park, located at 7700 Bull Run Drive, Centreville, Virginia 20121. 

Visit novaparks.com/ParkHistory to view the full documentary “The Student Bus Protest That Challenged Jim Crow” and more stories uncovered in Northern Virginia regional parks. 

About NOVA Parks 

Founded in 1959, NOVA Parks (Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority) represents three counties and three cities–Arlington County, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, the City of Alexandria, the City of Falls Church, and the City of Fairfax. The regional agency manages over 12,500 acres of parks and recreational facilities, including waterparks, golf courses, boat launches, and a high adventure ropes course.  

About the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University 
The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center is the largest and most comprehensive repository of books, documents, and ephemera on the global Black experience, including the personal and official papers of Kwame Nkrumah, Paul Robeson, Alain Locke, Mary Frances Berry, Dr. Benjamin Mays, Vernon Jordon, and Amiri Baraka, to name but a few from its over seven hundred collections. It was founded in 1914 as the Moorland Library and became a research center within Howard University in 1973, consisting of the University Archives Division, the Manuscripts Division, Library, Museum, and the Black Press Archive. Our mission is to provide access to history through diverse formats and to preserve it for generations to come.