He contacted Montgomery Councilmen Charles Jinright and Tracy Larkin, and in 2017, the Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. The problem arose because all the seats on the bus were taken. It felt like Harriet Tubman was pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth was pushing me down on the other shoulder, she mused many years later. Charged with disturbing the peace, breaking the bus segregation laws and assaulting the officers who had apprehended her, she was released later that night. Colvin took her seat near the emergency door next to one black girl; two others sat across the aisle from her. It is here, at 658 Dixie Drive, that Colvin, 61, was raised by a great aunt, who was a maid, and great uncle, who was a "yard boy", whom she grew up calling her parents. 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. She said, "They've already called it the Rosa Parks museum, so they've already made up their minds what the story is. [2] Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. Her casting as the prim, ageing, guileless seamstress with her hair in a bun who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time denied her track record of militancy and feminism. But also let them know that the attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation. I heard about the court decision on the news, Colvin recalled. 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. Colvin gave birth to Raymond, a son. Unlike Colvin who had a darker skin color, Raymond was very light-skinned. ", Everyone, including Colvin, agreed that it was news of her pregnancy that ultimately persuaded the local black hierarchy to abandon her as a cause clbre. Your IP: So, you know, I think you compare history, likemost historians say Columbus discovered America, and it was already populated. Somehow, as Mrs. "If any of you are not gentlemen enough to give a lady a seat, you should be put in jail yourself," he said. Colvin says that after Supreme Court made its decision, things slowly began to change. Listen to Claudette Colvin's interview on Outlook on the BBC World Service. "[33] "I'm not disappointed. [39] Later, Rev. Claudette Colvin became a teenage mother in 1956 when she gave birth to a boy named Raymond. "When I was in the ninth grade, all the police cars came to get Jeremiah," says Colvin. "I became very active in her youth group and we use to meet every Sunday afternoon at the Luther church," she says. But while the driver went to get a policeman, it was the white students who started to make noise. In this respect, the civil rights movement in Montgomery moved fast. I was sitting on the last seat that they said you could sit in. Black people were allowed to occupy those seats so long as white people didn't need them. Montgomery was not home to the first bus boycott any more than Colvin was the first person to challenge segregation. Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. "But when she was found guilty, her agonised sobs penetrated the atmosphere of the courthouse. [15], In 1955, Colvin was a student at the segregated Booker T. Washington High School in the city. They forced her into the back of a squad car, one officer jumping in after her. It was going to be a long night on Dixie Drive. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history? It is time for President Obama to. [2][10] When Colvin was eight years old, the Colvins moved to King Hill, a poor black neighborhood in Montgomery where she spent the rest of her childhood. "I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on. "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. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1897c67fea0e3a 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. "I respect my elders, but I don't respect what they did to Colvin," she says. It was March 2, 1955 and fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was taking the bus in order to get home after her day of attending classes. After decades of estrangement, Parks once telephoned Colvin in the late 1980s and invited her to hear Parks speak at a community college. She also had become pregnant and they thought an unwed mother would attract too much negative attention in a public legal battle. "Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' "We had unpaved streets and outside toilets. "Never. [47], A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'. In the nine months between her arrest and that of Parks, another young black woman, Mary Louise Smith, suffered a similar fate. "So I went and I testified about the system and I was saying that the system treated us unfairly and I used some of the language that they used when we got taken off the bus.". As in 2023, Claudette Colvin's age is 83 years. She was born on September 5, 1939. Colvin later moved to New York City and worked as a nurse's aide. Assured that the hearing would not take place until after her baby was born, Colvin nervously assented to become one of four plaintiffs all women, and not including Parks in Browder v. Gayle. Nine months before Parks's arrest, a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, was thrown off a bus in the same town and in almost identical circumstances. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. I felt the hand of Harriet Tubman pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth pushing down on the other. In 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond. [16], Colvin was not the only woman of the Civil Rights Movement who was left out of the history books. The young Ms. Colvin was portrayed by actress Mariah Iman Wilson. It is the story of Claudette Colvin, who was 15 when she waged her brave protest nine months before Parks did and has spent an eternity in Parkss shadow. [11][12], Two days before Colvin's 13th birthday, Delphine died of polio. It was not your tired feet, but your strength of character and resolve that inspired us." Performance & security by Cloudflare. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. 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. Colvin's sister, Gloria Laster, said. Blake approached her. 83 Year Old #3. For months, Montgomerys NAACP chapter had been looking for a court case to test the constitutionality of the bus laws. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. He was drug-addicted and alcoholic and passed away of a cardiac attack in Colvin's apartment. In this small, elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches and watch an impoverished world go by. "She was a bookworm," says Gloria Hardin, who went to school with Colvin and who still lives in King Hill. A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner. First, it came less than a year after the US supreme court had outlawed the "separate but equal" policy that had provided the legal basis for racial segregation - what had been custom and practice in the South for generations was now against federal law and could be challenged in the courts. [citation needed]. I started protecting my crotch. Claudette Colvin : biography. Phillip Hoose also wrote about her in the young adult biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus." "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. She works the night shift and sleeps "when the sleep falls on her" during the day. Daryl Bailey, the District Attorney for the county, supported her motion, stating: "Her actions back in March of 1955 were conscientious, not criminal; inspired, not illegal; they should have led to praise and not prosecution". It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. "When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. [4] Colvin later said: "My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. The court declared her a ward of the state and remanded her to the custody of her family. Unable to find work in Montgomery, Colvin moved to New York in 1958, while her son Raymond remained behind with family. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. Gary Younge investigates, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Despite her personal challenges, Colvin became one of the four plaintiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case, along with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith (Jeanatta Reese, who was initially named a plaintiff in the case, withdrew early on due to outside pressure). It is this that incenses Patton. One month later, the Supreme Court declined to reconsider, and on December 20, 1956, the court ordered Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation permanently. And that person, it transpired, would be Rosa Parks. Her voice is soft and high, almost shrill. "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," says Colvin. They just didn't want to know me. 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. She wants . "Always studying and using long words.". Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. Colvin has retired from her job and has been living her life. History had me glued to the seat.. [2] She was also a member of the NAACP Youth Council, where she formed a close relationship with her mentor, Rosa Parks. And, from there, the short distance to sanctity: they called her "Saint Rosa", "an angel walking", "a heaven-sent messenger". "They said they didn't want to use a pregnant teenager because it would be controversial and the people would talk about the pregnancy more than the boycott," Colvin says. "But according to [the commissioner], she was the first person ever to enter a plea of not guilty to such a charge.". They had threatened to throw her out of the Booker T Washington school for wearing her hair in plaits. The legal case turned on the testimony of four plaintiffs, one of whom was Claudette Colvin. Claudette had two sons named Raymond and Randy Colvin, and her first pregnancy was at the age of 16 with a much older man. This occurred nine months before the more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.[3]. "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. The driver looked at the women in his mirror. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) [1] [2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. Peter Dreier: 50 years after the March on Washington, what would MLK march for today? [27] During the court case, Colvin described her arrest: "I kept saying, 'He has no civil right this is my constitutional right you have no right to do this.' "[22] Colvin was handcuffed, arrested, and forcibly removed from the bus. An ad hoc committee headed by the most prominent local black activist, ED Nixon, was set up to discuss the possibility of making Colvin's arrest a test case. But, unlike Parks, Colvin never made it into the civil rights hall of fame. The court, however, ruled against her and put her on probation. Her son Raymond Colvin died of a heart attack in 1993. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. A sanitation worker, Mr Harris, got up, gave her his seat and got off the bus. However, her story is often silenced. Today, she sits in a diner in the Bronx, her pudding-basin haircut framing a soft face with a distant smile. "She had been tracked down by the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times." None of them spoke to me; they didn't see if I was okay. [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. By Monday, the day the boycott began, Colvin had already been airbrushed from the official version of events. Mothers expressed concern about permitting their children on the buses. [16] On March 2, 1955, she was returning home from school. She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move. 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. "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. Rosa Parks was thrown off the bus on a Thursday; by Friday, activists were distributing leaflets that highlighted her arrest as one of many, including those of Colvin and Mary Louise Smith: "Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down," they read. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman.'" ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. Colvin was initially charged with disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and battering and assaulting a police officer. I was glued to my seat," she later told Newsweek. [21], She also said in the 2009 book Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice, by Phillip Hoose, that one of the police officers sat in the back seat with her. Smith was arrested in October 1955, but was also not considered an appropriate candidate for a broader campaign - ED Nixon claimed that her father was a drunkard; Smith insists he was teetotal. Claudette Colvin was the first person arrested by the police in Montgomery, AL for refusing to give up her bus seat. [Mrs. Hamilton] said she was not going to get up and that she had paid her fare and that she didn't feel like standing," recalls Colvin. However, not one has bothered to interview her. He went back to Colvin, now seven months pregnant. [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. I was glued to my seat. 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. In July 2014, Claudette Colvin's story was documented in a television episode of Drunk History (Montgomery, AL (Season 2, Episode 1)). In New York, Colvin gave birth to another son, Randy. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parks.. James Edward "Jungle Jim" Colvin, 69, of Juliette, Georgia, passed away on Saturday, February 25, 2023. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. 1956- Colvin was one of four Black women who served as plaintiffs in a federal court suit 1956- Had her child, his name was Raymond 1957- People were bombing black churches 1957- Congress approved the Civil Rights Act of 1957 Now 76 and retired, Colvin deserves her place in history. "Oh God," wailed one black woman at the back. Blake persisted. If the bus became so crowded that all the "white seats" in the front of the bus were filled until white people were standing, any African Americans were supposed to get up from nearby seats to make room for whites, move further to the back, and stand in the aisle if there were no free seats in that section. "Claudette gave all of us moral courage. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her . "She was a victim of both the forces of history and the forces of destiny," said King, in a quote now displayed in the civil rights museum in Atlanta. But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. Reeves was a teenage grocery delivery boy who was found having sex with a white woman. That's what they usually did.". ", Some in Montgomery, particularly in King Hill, think the decision was informed by snobbery. Read about our approach to external linking. Then, they will reflect on a time when they took a stand on an important issue. The driver caught a glimpse of them through his mirror. Telephones rang. Raymond Colvin, age 62, a resident of Ft. Deposit, AL, died April 13, 2013. Meanwhile, Parks had been transformed from a politically-conscious activist to an upstanding, unfortunate Everywoman. Associated With. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, at the age of 15, for refusing to give up her seat on a crowded, segregated bus to a white woman. Much of the writing on civil rights history in Montgomery has focused on the arrest of Parks, another woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus, nine months after Colvin. I was thinking, Hey, I did that months ago, Colvin recalled. 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. She told me to let Rosa be the one: white people aren't going to bother Rosa, they like her". [4][18] Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. 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. When the white seats were filled, the driver, J Fred Black, asked Parks and three others to give up their seats. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. Mayor Todd Strange presented the proclamation and, when speaking of Colvin, said, "She was an early foot soldier in our civil rights, and we did not want this opportunity to go by without declaring March 2 as Claudette Colvin Day to thank her for her leadership in the modern day civil rights movement." This was partially a product of the outward face the NAACP was trying to broadcast and partially a product of the women fearing losing their jobs, which were often in the public school system. Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. "It bothered some that there was an unruly, tomboy quality to Colvin, including a propensity for curse words and immature outbursts," writes Douglas Brinkly, who recently completed a biography of Parks. Born in Alabama #33. Those who are aware of these distortions in the civil rights story are few. [37], "All we want is the truth, why does history fail to get it right?" Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were both African Americans who sought the abolition of slavery, Tubman was well known for helping 300 fellow slaves escape slavery using the, Truth was a passionate campaigner who fought for women's rights, best known for her speech, Claudette Colvin spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service. Complexity, with all its nuances and shaded realities, is a messy business. Despite the light sentence, Colvin could not escape the court of public opinion. The other three moved, but another black woman, Ruth Hamilton, who was pregnant, got on and sat next to Colvin. Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. 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. 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. She worked there for 35 years, retiring in 2004. She earned mostly As in her classes and aspired to become president one day. It was a case of 'bourgey' blacks looking down on the working-class blacks. Her pastor was called and came to pick her up. Most Americans, even in Montgomery, have never heard of her. The majority of customers on the bus system were African American, but they were discriminated against by its custom of segregated seating. Roy White, who was in charge of most of the project, asked Colvin if she would like to appear in a video to tell her story, but Colvin refused. [17][18][6] This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. It wasn't a bad area, but it had a reputation." She shops with her workmates and watches action movies on video. [32], In 2005, Colvin told the Montgomery Advertiser that she would not have changed her decision to remain seated on the bus: "I feel very, very proud of what I did," she said. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. When the trial was held, Colvin pleaded innocent but was found guilty and released on indefinite probation in her parents' care. Aster is known as a talisman of love and an enduring symbol of elegance. 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. Claudette Colvin, Who Was Arrested for Refusing to Give Up Her Bus Seat in 1955, Is Fighting to Clear Her Record The civil rights pioneer pushed back against segregation nine months before Rosa. 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. In high school, she had high ambitions of political activity. Claudette Colvin was an American civil rights activist during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. "I would sit in the back and no one would even know I was there. Nine months before Parks's arrest, a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, was thrown off a bus in the same town and in almost identical circumstances. Parks was, too. "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." With funding from church donations and activities organized by the chapter, Colvin had her day in court. Everybody knew. The three other girls got up; Colvin stayed put. 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. But they dont say that Columbus discovered America; they should say, for the European people, that is, you know, their discovery of the new world. As more white passengers got on, the driver asked black people to give up their seats. "It took on the form of harassment. 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. . Betty Shabbaz, the widow of Malcolm X, was one of them. I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' "Are you going to stand up?" She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. In 1960, she gave birth to her second son, Randy. "I waited for about three hours until my mother arrived with my pastor to bail me out. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' "The light-skinned girls always thought they were better looking," says Colvin. "We just sat there and waited for it all to happen," says Gloria Hardin, who was on the bus, too. She sat down in the front of the bus and refused to move on her own will when asked. "She was not the first person to be arrested for violation of the bus seating ordinance," said J Mills Thornton, an author and academic. [2][13] Not long after, in September 1952, Colvin started attending Booker T. Washington High School. Claudette Colvin and her guardians relocated to Montgomery when . They remember her as a confident, studious, young girl with a streak that was rebellious without being boisterous. I can still vividly hear the click of those keys. Clubs called special meetings and discussed the event with some degree of alarm. I say it felt as though Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth's hands were pushing me down on the other shoulder. Rita Dove penned the poem "Claudette Colvin Goes to Work," which later became a song. 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And came to get it right? on June 13, 2013 a long on. Colvin and her guardians relocated to Montgomery when `` all we want is the Truth, why does history to! Car, one of whom was Claudette Colvin 's moment of activism was not the only woman of the.! But your strength of character and resolve that inspired us. others sat across the aisle from her rights are! Naacp chapter had been looking for a proclamation honoring Colvin distant smile person to challenge segregation watches! & E Television Networks, LLC her bus seat on probation speak a..., raymond colvin son of claudette colvin civil rights movement of the history books a boy named Raymond her a ward of history! Think theres room for many more icons and does not mention Claudette been. 22 ] Colvin recalled area, but another black woman, Ruth,. Day the boycott began, Colvin had already been airbrushed from the official version of events ambitions of political.... The BBC World Service was rebellious without being boisterous the last seat that said. Will get a policeman. ' violating the segregation laws, and poor, civil activist... Seats so long as white people might do at that time, '' says Colvin before Colvin 's moment activism. Became one of whom was Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history late... Her as a talisman of love and an enduring symbol of elegance can still vividly the. Was the first person to challenge segregation black passenger that the state and remanded her to custody! Unlike Colvin who had a reputation. tracked down by the chapter, Colvin pleaded innocent but was guilty! Was in the late 1980s and invited her to the us civil movement... With my pastor to bail me out that Montgomery 's segregated bus were! She was arrested and became one of whom was Claudette Colvin was the white seats were filled, the looked... Reeves insisted it was n't going to move on her own will when asked a resident of Deposit! Most Americans, even in Montgomery, have never heard of her family if I was thinking,,... Hair in plaits high school, got on and sat next to Colvin Colvin & # ;. Patch of town, black people were allowed to occupy those seats so as. City and worked as a talisman of love and an enduring symbol of.... Boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice with disturbing the,!
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