Dovey Mae Johnson Roundtree was a Civil Rights activist, an ordained minister, and attorney. The Reverend Dovey Johnson Roundtree was an ordained itinerant elder in the AME Church and served as the General Counsel of the Connectional AME Church for many years. She was a member of Allen Chapel AME Church "The Cathedral of Southeast", in Washington, DC. Reverend Roundtree was also an Army veteran. As an attorney she brought the first bus desegregation case before the ICC which resulted in the only explicit repudiation of the “separate but equal” doctrine in the field of interstate bus transportation. As a partner in the Washington, D.C. firm of Roundtree, Knox, Hunter and Parker, in 1970, Roundtree was special consultant for legal affairs to the AME Church, and General Counsel to the National Council of Negro Women. Reverend, Attorney Roundtree first entered the Civil Rights arena in October 1945 in a nine-month postwar assignment. During her first year being a lawyer (1952), Roundtree, along with her partner and mentor, Julius Winfield Robertson, took on a bus desegregation case that would make legal history: Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (1955). The case history states that Sarah Keys Evans, while traveling state-to-state by coach bus, refused the white bus driver's command that she yield her seat to a white Marine. Evans was arrested and jailed. It took several years and the case was denied by rulings in a few hearings, but it wasn’t until September 1961, being under pressure from the Attorney General, that the Interstate Commerce Commission finally put an end to segregation in travel across state lines. Through the years, Roundtree and her partner, Julius Robertson, represented black clients in civil and criminal matters in segregated courtrooms in Washington, DC.
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Church Affiliation:Allen Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church
Role in the Movement:Dovey Mae Johnson Roundtree was a Civil Rights activist, an ordained minister, and attorney.
Birth Place:Charlotte, NC
Born Date:April 17, 1914
Deceased Date:May 21, 2018
Place Lived as Adult:Washington, DC
Church Location:Daytona Beach, FL