", Not so Colvin. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. By Monday, the day the boycott began, Colvin had already been airbrushed from the official version of events. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. Two years earlier, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, African-Americans launched an effective bus boycott after drivers refused to honour an integrated seating policy, which was settled in an unsatisfactory fudge. It was this dark, clever, angry young woman who boarded the Highland Avenue bus on Friday, March 2, 1955, opposite Martin Luther King's church on Dexter Avenue, Montgomery. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. In this small, elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches and watch an impoverished world go by. "We learned about negro spirituals and recited poems but my social studies teachers went into more detail," she says. Parks's arrest sparked a chain reaction that started the bus boycott that launched the civil rights movement that transformed the apartheid of America's southern states from a local idiosyncrasy to an international scandal. Colvin has retired from her job and has been living her life. Claudette Colvin in 2009. [16][19], When Colvin refused to get up, she was thinking about a school paper she had written that day about the local customs that prohibited blacks from using the dressing rooms in order to try on clothes in department stores. While her role in the fight to end segregation in Montgomery may not be widely recognized, Colvin helped advance civil rights efforts in the city. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to. The court declared her a ward of the state and remanded her to the custody of her family. [16], Through the trial Colvin was represented by Fred Gray, a lawyer for the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which was organizing civil rights actions. Angry protests erupt over Greek rail disaster, Explosive found in check-in luggage at US airport, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. Associated With. 1939- Claudette was born in Birmingham 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the presidential term of office . "Had it not been for Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, there may not have been a Thurgood Marshall, a Martin Luther King or a Rosa Parks. The pace of life is so slow and the mood so mellow that local residents look as if they have been wading through molasses in a half-hearted attempt to catch up with the past 50 years. "Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom.". At 82, her arrest is expunged", "Claudette Colvin's juvenile record has been expunged, 66 years after she was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a White person", "John McCutcheon sings Rita Dove's 'Claudette Colvin', Drunk History' Montgomery, AL (TV Episode 2014), "The Newsroom - Will McAvoy On Historical Hypotheticals", "Report: Biopic about civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin in the works", The Other Rosa Parks (Colvin interview with, Vanessa de la Torre, "In The Shadow of Rosa Parks: 'Unsung Hero' of Civil Rights Movement Speaks Out", "An asterisk, not a star, of black history", Let us Look at Jim Crow for the Criminal he is - Rosa Parks' bus stand and the long history of bus resistance, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Claudette_Colvin&oldid=1142354716. "She was an A student, quiet, well-mannered, neat, clean, intelligent, pretty, and deeply religious," writes Jo Ann Robinson in her authoritative book, The Montgomery Bus Boycott And The Women Who Started It. Video, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat, Claudette Colvin's interview on Outlook on the BBC World Service, Whiskey fungus forces Jack Daniels to stop construction, Harry and Meghan told to 'vacate' Frogmore Cottage, Rare Jurassic-era bug found at Arkansas Walmart, Havana Syndrome unlikely to have hostile cause - US, India PM Modi urges G20 to overcome divisions, Starbucks illegally fired workers over union - judge, NFL hopeful accused of racing in deadly car crash. "If any of you are not gentlemen enough to give a lady a seat, you should be put in jail yourself," he said. [30] Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. ", "I wanted to go north and liberate my people," explains Colvin. He went back to Colvin, now seven months pregnant. From "high-yellas" to "coal-coloureds", it is a tension steeped not only in language but in the arts, from Harlem Renaissance novelist Nella Larsen's book, Passing, to Spike Lee's film, School Daze. For Colvin, the entire episode was traumatic: "Nowadays, you'd call it statutory rape, but back then it was just the kind of thing that happened," she says, describing the conditions under which she conceived. When Colvin moved to New York many years later to become a nurse, she didn't tell many people about the part she played in the civil rights movement. On the night of Parks' arrest, the Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system. But there were two things about Colvin's stand on that March day that made it significant. When Austin abandoned the family, Gadson was unable to financially support her children. "So did the teachers, too. Under the twisted logic of segregation the white woman still couldn't sit down, as then white and black passengers would have been sharing a row of seats - and the whole point was that white passengers were meant to be closer to the front. [44], Former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove memorialized Colvin in her poem "Claudette Colvin Goes To Work",[45] published in her 1999 book On the Bus with Rosa Parks; folk singer John McCutcheon turned this poem into a song, which was first publicly performed in Charlottesville, Virginia's Paramount Theater in 2006. When Ms Nesbitt, her 10th grade teacher, asked the class to write down what they wanted to be, she unfolded a piece of paper with Colvin's handwriting on it that said: "President of the United States. Like Colvin, Parks was commuting home and was seated in the "coloured section" of the bus. She resisted bus segregation nine months before Rosa Parks, . But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. If one white person wanted to sit down there, then all the black people on that row were supposed to get up and either stand or move further to the back. ", They took her to City Hall, where she was charged with misconduct, resisting arrest and violating the city segregation laws. The driver kept on going but stopped when he reached a junction where a police squad car was waiting. They just didn't want to know me. Rosa Parks was neither a victim nor a saint, but a long-standing political activist and feminist. "[4][5] Colvin's case was dropped by civil rights campaigners because Colvin was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings. It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. Phillip Hoose. "She gave me the feeling that I was the Moses that God had sent to Pharaoh," said Fred Gray, the lawyer who went on to represent her. Today their boycott, modelled on the one in Montgomery, is largely forgotten - but it was a milestone in achieving equality. Jeanetta Reese later resigned from the case. Colvin never married but gave birth to two sons, the first was Raymond Colvin (b. December 1955, died 1993). "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. "So I told him I was not going to get up, either. "But according to [the commissioner], she was the first person ever to enter a plea of not guilty to such a charge.". The discussions in the black community began to focus on black enterprise rather than integration, although national civil rights legislation did not pass until 1964 and 1965. She was fingerprinted, denied a phone call and locked into a cell. The court, however, ruled against her and put her on probation. As civil rights attorney Fred Gray put it, Claudette gave all of us moral courage. It is time for President Obama to. Virgo Civil Rights Leader #2. During her pregnancy, she was abandoned by civil rights leaders. Months before Rosa Parks became the mother of the modern civil rights movement by refusing to move to the back of a segregated Alabama bus, Black teenager Claudette Colvin did the same. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. The driver looked at the women in his mirror. Colvin later moved to New York City and worked as a nurse's aide. Click to reveal She relied on the city's buses to get to and from school because her family did not own a car. The boycott was very effective but the city still resisted complying with protesters' demands - an end to the policy preventing the hiring of black bus drivers and the introduction of first-come first-seated rule. Reeves was a teenage grocery delivery boy who was found having sex with a white woman. I felt the hand of Harriet Tubman pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth pushing down on the other. In July 2014, Claudette Colvin's story was documented in a television episode of Drunk History (Montgomery, AL (Season 2, Episode 1)). And, from there, the short distance to sanctity: they called her "Saint Rosa", "an angel walking", "a heaven-sent messenger". "He wanted me to give up my seat for a white person and I would have done it for an elderly person but this was a young white woman. After her arrest and release to the custody of her pastor and great-aunt, the bright, opinionated Colvin insisted to everyone within earshot that she wanted to contest the charges. "It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing.". "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. It is this that incenses Patton. After training, she landed a job as a nurses aide in a Catholic hospital in Manhattan. It was a journey not only into history but also mythology. One incident in particular preoccupied her at the time - the plight of her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves. Joseph Rembert said, "If nobody did anything for Claudette Colvin in the past why don't we do something for her right now?" In 1955, at age 15, Claudette Colvin . Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. "And since it had to happen, I'm happy it happened to a person like Mrs Parks," said Martin Luther King from the pulpit of the Holt Street Baptist Church. [48], In the second season (2013) of the HBO drama series The Newsroom, the lead character, Will McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels), uses Colvin's refusal to comply with segregation as an example of how "one thing" can change everything. "He asked us both to get up. "When ED Nixon and the Women's Political Council of Montgomery recognised that you could be that hero, you met the challenge and changed our lives forever. NPR's Margot Adler has said that black organizations believed that Rosa Parks would be a better figure for a test case for integration because she was an adult, had a job, and had a middle-class appearance. Reverend Ralph Abernathy, who played a key role as King's right-hand man throughout the civil rights years, referred to her as a "tool" of the movement. So, you know, I think you compare history, likemost historians say Columbus discovered America, and it was already populated. "She was a bookworm," says Gloria Hardin, who went to school with Colvin and who still lives in King Hill. Colvin's sister, Gloria Laster, said. [47], A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. Claudette had two sons named Raymond and Randy Colvin, and her first pregnancy was at the age of 16 with a much older man. "We just sat there and waited for it all to happen," says Gloria Hardin, who was on the bus, too. Colvin left Montgomery for New York in 1958, because she had difficulty finding and keeping work after the notoriety of the . The record of her arrest and adjudication of delinquency was expunged by the district court in 2021, with the support of the district attorney for the county in which the charges were brought more than 66 years before. "I had almost a life history of being rebellious against being mistreated against my colour," she said. "[38], Colvin's role has not gone completely unrecognized. Your IP: King Hill, Montgomery, is the sepia South. When the white seats were filled, the driver, J Fred Black, asked Parks and three others to give up their seats. The police arrived and convinced a black man sitting behind the two women to move so that Mrs. Hamilton could move back, but Colvin still refused to move. "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," says Colvin. She sat in the colored section about two seats away from an emergency exit, in a Capitol Heights bus. Complexity, with all its nuances and shaded realities, is a messy business. Claudette Colvin is an activist who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s. "What's going on with these niggers?" They forced her into the back of a squad car, one officer jumping in after her. To sustain the boycott, communities organised carpools and the Montgomery's African-American taxi drivers charged only 10 cents - the same price as bus fare - for fellow African Americans. "There was no assault", Price said. And that person, it transpired, would be Rosa Parks. [49], The Little-Known Heroes: Claudette Colvin, a children's picture book by Kaushay and Spencer Ford, was published in 2021. On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old black seamstress, boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, after a hard day's work, took a seat and headed for home. "When I was in the ninth grade, all the police cars came to get Jeremiah," says Colvin. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn't like themselves. Her timing was superb. Colvin was not invited officially for the formal dedication of the museum, which opened to the public in September 2016. While this does not happen by conspiracy, it is often facilitated by collusion. ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. . "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," Colvin later said. "New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama. Video1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat, How 10% of Nigerian registered voters delivered victory, Sake brewers toast big rise in global sales, The Indian-American CEO who wants to be US president, Blackpink lead top stars back on the road in Asia, Exploring the rigging claims in Nigeria's elections, 'Wales is in England' gaffe sparks TikToker's trip. You can't sugarcoat it. Some have tried to change that. All Rights Reserved. In 2016, the Smithsonian Institution and its National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) were challenged by Colvin and her family, who asked that Colvin be given a more prominent mention in the history of the civil rights movement. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) [1] [2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. ", Almost 50 years on, Colvin still talks about the incident with a mixture of shock and indignation - as though she still cannot believe that this could have happened to her. "She had been yelling, 'It's my constitutional right!'. She also had become pregnant and they thought an unwed mother would attract too much negative attention in a public legal battle. ", 'Facts speak only when the historian calls on them," wrote the historian EH Carr in his landmark work, What Is History? Parks was, too. "I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on. The legal case turned on the testimony of four plaintiffs, one of whom was Claudette Colvin. "The news travelled fast," wrote Robinson. He remarks that if the ACLU had used her act of civil disobedience, rather than that of Rosa Parks' eight months later, to highlight the injustice of segregation, a young preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. may never have attracted national attention, and America probably would not have had his voice for the Civil Rights Movement. "Nobody slept at home because we thought there would be some retaliation," says Colvin. And, like Parks, the local black establishment started to rally support nationwide for her cause. [4], "The bus was getting crowded, and I remember the bus driver looking through the rearview mirror asking her [Colvin] to get up for the white woman, which she didn't," said Annie Larkins Price, a classmate of Colvin. . Colvin went to her job instead. "He said he wanted the people to know about the 15-year-old, because really, if I had not made the first cry for freedom, there wouldn't have been a Rosa Parks, and after Rosa Parks, there wouldn't have been a Dr King. [4][18] Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. Parkss protest helped spark the Montgomery bus boycott, which black leaders sought to supplement with a federal civil suit challenging the constitutionality of Montgomerys bus laws. Everybody knew. Almost nine months after Colvins bus protest, she heard news reports that Parks, a 42-year-old seamstress, had likewise been arrested for a bus seating protest. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. It reads: "The wonderful thing which you have just done makes me feel like a craven coward. "I went bipolar. For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. Colvin left Montgomery for New York City in 1958,[6] because she had difficulty finding and keeping work following her participation in the federal court case that overturned bus segregation. "She was not the first person to be arrested for violation of the bus seating ordinance," said J Mills Thornton, an author and academic. Instead of being taken to a juvenile detention centre, Colvin was taken to an adult jail and put in a small cell with nothing in it but a broken sink and a cot without a mattress. Although some of the details might seem familiar, this is not the Rosa Parks story. However, her story is often silenced. Claudette Colvin, a civil rights pioneer who in March 1955, at the age of 15, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White person on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, is seeking to get her . The case, organized and filed in federal court by civil rights attorney Fred Gray, challenged city bus segregation in Montgomery as unconstitutional. The death news of Colvin, which has been going on the Internet, is untrue; she is alive and is 83. Members of the community acted as lookouts, while Colvin's father sat up all night with a shotgun, in case the Ku Klux Klan turned up. But it is also a rare and excellent one that gives her more than a passing, dismissive mention. Read about our approach to external linking. "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. At the time, black leaders, including the Rev. She said she felt as if she was "getting [her] Christmas in January rather than the 25th. Claudette Colvin, 81, was a true pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement. [6][7] It is now widely accepted that Colvin was not accredited by civil rights campaigners at the time due to her circumstances. Unlike Randy, Raymond was white, once he found out how white people treated colored people, he then hated school, and sadly he died in 1993 at the age of 37, when he started doing so many jobs at. "I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on. It was a case of 'bourgey' blacks looking down on the working-class blacks. When Colvin's case was appealed to the Montgomery Circuit Court on May 6, 1955, the charges of disturbing the peace and violating the segregation laws were dropped, although her conviction for assaulting a police officer was upheld. "It would have been different if I hadn't been pregnant, but if I had lived in a different place or been light-skinned, it would have made a difference, too. After her minister paid her bail, she went home where she and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation. People often make death hoaxes of well-known personalities to get public attention and views. She herself didn't talk about it much, but she spoke recently to the BBC. A 15-year-old high school student at the time, Colvin got fed up and refused to move even before Parks. In this lesson, students will learn about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old who stood up for equal rights in 1955. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. She retired in 2004. But what I do remember is when they asked me to stick my arms out the window and that's when they handcuffed me," Colvin says. I didn't want to discuss it with them," she says. In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks defied segregation laws by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 15-year-old Claudette . But the very spirit and independence of mind that had inspired Parks to challenge segregation started to pose a threat to Montgomery's black male hierarchy, which had started to believe, and then resent, their own spin. "It is he who decides which facts to give the floor and in what order or context. He was drug-addicted and alcoholic and passed away of a cardiac attack in Colvin's apartment. Colvin has remained unmarried all her life. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. The Montgomery bus boycott was then called off after a few months. [51], National Museum of African American History and Culture, "Power Dynamics of a Segregated City: Class, Gender, and Claudette Colvin's Struggle for Equality", "Before Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin Stayed in Her Bus Seat", "From Footnote to Fame in Civil Rights History", "Before Rosa Parks, A Teenager Defied Segregation On An Alabama Bus", "Chapter 1 (excerpt): 'Up From Pine Level', "#ThrowbackThursday: The girl who acted before Rosa Parks", "Claudette Colvin: an unsung hero in the Montgomery Bus Boycott", "The Origins of the Montgomery Bus Boycott", "A Forgotten Contribution: Before Rosa Parks, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on the bus", "Claudette Colvin: First to keep her seat", "Claudette Colvin | Americans Who Tell The Truth", "Claudette Colvin: the woman who refused to give up her bus seat nine months before Rosa Parks", "2 other bus boycott heroes praise Parks' acclaim", "This once-forgotten civil rights hero deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom", "Chairman Crowley Honors Civil Rights Pioneer Claudette Colvin", "The Other Rosa Parks: Now 73, Claudette Colvin Was First to Refuse Giving Up Seat on Montgomery Bus", "Claudette Colvin Seeks Greater Recognition For Role In Making Civil Rights History", "Weekend: Civil rights heroine Claudette Colvin", "Claudette Colvin honored by Montgomery council", "Alabama unveils statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks", "Rosa Parks statue unveiled in Alabama on anniversary of her refusal to give up seat", "She refused to move bus seats months before Rosa Parks. She deserves our attention, our gratitude and a warm, bright spotlight all her own. For we like our history neat - an easy-to-follow, self-contained narrative with dates, characters and landmarks with which we can weave together otherwise unrelated events into one apparently seamless length of fabric held together by sequence and consequence. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. Respectfully and faithfully yours. He was . Colvin is not exactly bitter. She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move. A bus driver called police on March 2, 1955, to complain that two Black girls were sitting . "I became very active in her youth group and we use to meet every Sunday afternoon at the Luther church," she says. [2] Colvin and her sister referred to the Colvins as their parents and took their last name. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history? Listen to Claudette Colvin's interview on Outlook on the BBC World Service. That summer she became pregnant by a much older man. Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in the first federal court case filed by civil rights attorney Fred Gray on February 1, 1956, as Browder v. Gayle, to challenge bus segregation in the city. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack at age 37. She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. "[citation needed], The police officers who took her to the station made sexual comments about her body and took turns guessing her bra size throughout the ride. Growing up in one of Montgomery's poorer neighborhoods, Colvin studied hard in school. He was born on March 3, 1931, in Mound City, S.D., the son of Alfred Gunderson and Verna Johnson Gunderson. In 2009, the writer Phillip Hoose published a book that told her story in detail for the first time. [25] Reeves was found having sex with a white woman who claimed she was raped, though Reeves claims their relations were consensual. She is a civil rights activist from the 1950s and a retired nurse aide. She still has one - a handwritten note from William Harris in Sacramento. Colvin took her seat near the emergency door next to one black girl; two others sat across the aisle from her. In 1969, years after moving to NYC, she acquired a job working as a Nurse's aide at a Nursing home. "I didn't know if they were crazy, if they were going to take me to a Klan meeting. Claudette Colvin's birth flower is Aster/Myosotis. I had been kicked out of school, and I had a 3-month-old baby.. Her voice is soft and high, almost shrill. Ms. Colvin in New York on Feb. 5, 2009. Colvin was initially charged with disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and battering and assaulting a police officer. 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