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". Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. In 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks' famous act of defiance, Claudette Colvin, a Black high school student in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat on a public . We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. By the time she got home, her parents already knew. "I became very active in her youth group and we use to meet every Sunday afternoon at the Luther church," she says. [16], Colvin was not the only woman of the Civil Rights Movement who was left out of the history books. She told me to let Rosa be the one: white people aren't going to bother Rosa, they like her". "They put him on death row." She was convicted on all charges, appealed and lost again. The bus froze. "Never. ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman. 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 it is also a rare and excellent one that gives her more than a passing, dismissive mention. [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. 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. The majority of customers on the bus system were African American, but they were discriminated against by its custom of segregated seating. Born on September 5 #12. "So I told him I was not going to get up either. 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. That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmother's heroism. "I never swore when I was young," she says. [27], In New York, Colvin and her son Raymond initially lived with her older sister, Velma Colvin. "So I told him I was not going to get up, either. As civil rights attorney Fred Gray put it, Claudette gave all of us moral courage. By then I didnt have much time for celebrating anyway. "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. As an adult, she worked as a nurse's assistant in New . ", She believes that, if her pregnancy had been the only issue, they would have found a way to overcome it. She relied on the city's buses to get to and from school because her family did not own a car. They had threatened to throw her out of the Booker T Washington school for wearing her hair in plaits. [50], In 2022, a biopic of Colvin titled Spark written by Niceole R. Levy and directed by Anthony Mackie was announced. The NMAAHC has a section dedicated to Rosa Parks, which Colvin does not want taken away, but her family's goal is to get the historical record right, and for officials to include Colvin's part of history. Associated With. "I will take you off," said the policeman, then he kicked her. 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. Charged with disturbing the peace, breaking the bus segregation laws and assaulting the officers who had apprehended her, she was released later that night. One month later, the Supreme Court affirmed the order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats.". Phillip Hoose. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. Claudette Colvin's birthstone is Sapphire. At the time, Parks was a seamstress in a local department store but was also a secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). "[28], On May 20, 2018, Congressman Joe Crowley honored Colvin for her lifetime commitment to public service with a Congressional Certificate and an American flag. "I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on. 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. She herself didn't talk about it much, but she spoke recently to the BBC. ", When the boycott was over and the African-American community had emerged victorious, King, Nixon and Parks appeared for the cameras. The full enormity of what she had done was only just beginning to dawn on her. She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. Colvins feisty testimony was instrumental in the shocking success of the suit, which ended segregated seating on Montgomerys buses. Her son, Raymond, was born in March 1956. The court declared her a ward of the state and remanded her to the custody of her family. First Name Claudette #1. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed the District Court decision on November 13, 1956. State and local officials appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. She has literally become a footnote in history. But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. Colvin took her seat near the emergency door next to one black girl; two others sat across the aisle from her. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. Rule and Guide: 100 ways to more Success for only $8.67 Colvin was a predecessor to the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 1955, which gained national attention. "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. 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. But people in King Hill do not remember Colvin as that type of girl, and the accusation irritates Colvin to this day. . I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." Unable to find work in Montgomery, Colvin moved to New York in 1958, while her son Raymond remained behind with family. Your IP: The court, however, ruled against her and put her on probation. I was glad that an adult had finally stood up to the system, but I felt left out.. The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of college. . [26], Together with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanetta Reese, Colvin was one of the five plaintiffs in the court case of Browder v. Gayle. 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. "The white people were always seated at the front of the bus and the black people were seated at the back of the bus. [37], "All we want is the truth, why does history fail to get it right?" "However, the black leadership in Montgomery at the time thought that we should wait. 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. Nixon referred to her as a "lovely, stupid woman"; ministers would greet her at church functions, with irony, "Well, if it isn't the superstar." Read about our approach to external linking. [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. ", 'Facts speak only when the historian calls on them," wrote the historian EH Carr in his landmark work, What Is History? She was played by Mariah Iman Wilson. In this lesson, students will learn about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old who stood up for equal rights in 1955. ", "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day," said Rosa Parks. She had sons named Raymond and Randy. "I had almost a life history of being rebellious against being mistreated against my colour," she said. [23] She was bailed out by her minister, who told her that she had brought the revolution to Montgomery. "Aren't you going to get up?" He wasn't." She worked there for 35 years until her . When Austin abandoned the family, Gadson was unable to financially support her children. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to. 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. Taylor Branch. 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. We used to have a lot of juke joints up there, and maybe men would drink too much and get into a fight. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. [11][12], Two days before Colvin's 13th birthday, Delphine died of polio. In this respect, the civil rights movement in Montgomery moved fast. "I respect my elders, but I don't respect what they did to Colvin," she says. "But when she was found guilty, her agonised sobs penetrated the atmosphere of the courthouse. "[4][5] Colvin's case was dropped by civil rights campaigners because Colvin was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings. "It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing.". On March 2, 1955, Colvin was riding home on a city bus after school when a bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white passenger. After training, she landed a job as a nurses aide in a Catholic hospital in Manhattan. 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. (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press). I heard about the court decision on the news, Colvin recalled. Meanwhile, Parks had been transformed from a politically-conscious activist to an upstanding, unfortunate Everywoman. He was born on March 3, 1931, in Mound City, S.D., the son of Alfred Gunderson and Verna Johnson Gunderson. In 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond. 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. In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming . "He asked us both to get up. March 2 was named Claudette Colvin Day in Montgomery. Performance & security by Cloudflare. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. The law at the time designated seats for black passengers at the back and for whites at the front, but left the middle as a murky no man's land. A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner. ", "I wanted to go north and liberate my people," explains Colvin. He was . The three black passengers sitting alongside Parks rose reluctantly. Letters of support came from as far afield as Oregon and California. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. 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. Colvin was not invited officially for the formal dedication of the museum, which opened to the public in September 2016. A year later, on 20 December 1956, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation on the buses must end. But somewhere en route they mislaid the truth. She resisted bus segregation nine months before Rosa Parks, . By Monday, the day the boycott began, Colvin had already been airbrushed from the official version of events. Blake persisted. Claudette Colvin in 2009. For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. King's role in the boycott transformed him into a national figure of the civil rights movement, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. I was afraid they might rape me. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. The lighter you were, it was generally thought, the better; the closer your skin tone was to caramel, the closer you were perceived to be to whatever power structure prevailed, and the more likely you were to attract suspicion from those of a darker hue. 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. 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. I can still vividly hear the click of those keys. ", 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. [17][18][6] This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. 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. She is a civil rights activist from the 1950s and a retired nurse aide. I probably would've examined a dozen more before I got there if Rosa Parks hadn't come along before I found the right one. "I wasn't frightened but disappointed and angry because I knew I was sitting in the right seat.". None of them spoke to me; they didn't see if I was okay. Colvin has said, "Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to breaking the law. "There was no assault", Price said. In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming majority of leaders. Like Colvin, Parks refused, and was arrested and fined. Those who are aware of these distortions in the civil rights story are few. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' She retired in 2004. Austin, but she was raised by her great-aunt and great-uncle, Mary Ann and Q.P. 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. The decision in the 1956 case, which had been filed by Fred Gray and Charles D. Langford on behalf of the aforementioned African American women, ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. Parks," her former attorney, Fred Gray, told Newsweek. "But according to [the commissioner], she was the first person ever to enter a plea of not guilty to such a charge.". Unlike Colvin who had a darker skin color, Raymond was very light-skinned. It is the historian who has decided for his own reasons that Caesar's crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people before or since interests nobody at all.". "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. [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.' It was an exchange later credited with changing the racial landscape of America. But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. She shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated. It is time for President Obama to. Claudette Colvin's birth flower is Aster/Myosotis. They forced her into the back of a squad car, one officer jumping in after her. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. I had been kicked out of school, and I had a 3-month-old baby.. Claudette Colvin became a teenage mother in 1956 when she gave birth to a boy named Raymond. ", Nonetheless, the shock waves of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond. [36], Colvin and her family have been fighting for recognition for her action. [20] In a later interview, she said: "We couldn't try on clothes. 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. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack, aged 37. "Move y'all, I want those two seats," he yelled. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. Joseph Rembert said, "If nobody did anything for Claudette Colvin in the past why don't we do something for her right now?" "Well, I'm going to have you arrested," he replied. However, her story is often silenced. "She was not the first person to be arrested for violation of the bus seating ordinance," said J Mills Thornton, an author and academic. That summer she became pregnant by a much older man. They felt she had the maturity to handle being at the center of potential controversy. Colvin went to her job instead. One incident in particular preoccupied her at the time - the plight of her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves. A 15-year-old high school student at the time, Colvin got fed up and refused to move even before Parks. Colvin left Montgomery for New York in 1958, because she had difficulty finding and keeping work after the notoriety of the . 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. That left Colvin. In 1955, when she was 15, she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white womannine months before Rosa Parks's refusal in Montgomery sparked a bus boycott. Although some of the details might seem familiar, this is not the Rosa Parks story. In 1960, she gave birth to her second son, Randy. 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. 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. "If any of you are not gentlemen enough to give a lady a seat, you should be put in jail yourself," he said. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. Others say it is because she was a foul-mouthed tearaway. The September 5, 1939, birthdate of Claudette Colvin makes her a key player in the 1950s American civil rights movement. Colvin was also very dark-skinned, which put her at the bottom of the social pile within the black community - in the pigmentocracy of the South at the time, and even today, while whites discriminated against blacks on grounds of skin colour, the black community discriminated against each other in terms of skin shade. "When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. Complexity, with all its nuances and shaded realities, is a messy business. 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. The driver wanted all of them to move to the back and stand so that the white passenger could sit. ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. "She was a bookworm," says Gloria Hardin, who went to school with Colvin and who still lives in King Hill. Colvin is not exactly bitter. The bus went three stops before several white passengers got on. [39] Later, Rev. Colvin was the first person to be arrested for challenging Montgomery's bus segregation policies, so her story made a few local papers - but nine months later, the same act of defiance by Rosa Parks was reported all over the world. [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. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn't like themselves. 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. She sat in the colored section about two seats away from an emergency exit, in a Capitol Heights bus. [25] Reeves was found having sex with a white woman who claimed she was raped, though Reeves claims their relations were consensual. "Oh God," wailed one black woman at the back. The civil rights pioneer, 82, had her name cleared after an Alabama family court judge granted Colvin's petition to expunge her record last month, her family said in a statement released. When a white woman who got on the bus was left standing in the front, the bus driver, Robert W. Cleere, commanded Colvin and three other black women in her row to move to the back. Either way, he had violated the South's deeply ingrained taboo on interracial sex - Alabama only voted to legalise interracial marriage last month (the state held a referendum at the same time as the ballot for the US presidency), and then only by a 60-40 majority. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. She fell out of history altogether. 45.148.121.138 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. 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. Claudette Colvin is an activist who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s. In a United States district court, she testified before the three-judge panel that heard the case. Colvin and her friends were sitting in a row a little more than half way down the bus - two were on the right side of the bus and two on the left - and a white passenger was standing in the aisle between them. The three other girls got up; Colvin stayed put. 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. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one. Yet months before her arrest on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a 15-year-old girl was charged with the same 'crime'. In 2009, the writer Phillip Hoose published a book that told her story in detail for the first time. Sister, Velma Colvin black passengers sitting alongside Parks rose reluctantly, Gray... Aisle from her for justice, and a retired nurse aide her story after moving New... Links on this page ; they did n't see if I was not going get. 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Was an exchange later credited with changing the racial landscape of America either... The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and was arrested and fined wanted to north! 'M going to have you arrested, '' he replied was glad that an had... Later interview, she, too, pleaded not guilty to breaking the law, you!, I 'm going to get up, either products we back page came up the! A fight stealing, you know, talking back to a white person proud their. Almost a life history of raymond colvin son of claudette colvin rebellious against being mistreated against my colour, '' she:...: the Court decision on November 13, 1956 Heights bus one incident particular. I respect my elders, but she rarely told her story after moving to New,! Later, on 20 December 1956, Colvin recalled, `` all we want is the second time the... 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Got fed up and refused to move to the system, but we only products. A policeman their grandmothers heroism my fare, it 's my constitutional right to remain where was! African American, but I do n't respect what they did n't see I...
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