Back in March, I wrote about the late Sarah Keys Evans, a Black veteran who played a key role in desegregating interstate travel. Before the summer of 1952, the 23-year-old private first class had never even taken part in a civil rights protest—but after she was arrested and jailed overnight in her Women’s Army Corps uniform for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white Marine, Keys Evans spent years fighting for justice through the courts, paving the way for Rosa Parks and the Freedom Riders.

I discussed Keys Evans’ underappreciated but important case with the author Amy Nathan, whose latest book, Riding Into History, tells her story. Her profile had risen in recent years, as I wrote at the time:

In 2020, nearly 70 years after Evans’ arrest, Roanoke Rapids installed a series of murals about the veteran’s fight for justice, which Evans told a Time reporter she saw as a tribute to all the overlooked women who “kept the spark going” during the Civil Rights Movement.

But weeks after that first piece ran, I received a tip that........

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