They never came and discussed it with my parents. "I respect my elders, but I don't respect what they did to Colvin," she says. 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. A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner. "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.". ", Some in Montgomery, particularly in King Hill, think the decision was informed by snobbery. They just didn't want to know me. The organisation didn't want a teenager in the role, she says. ", Nonetheless, the shock waves of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond. 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. Name: Claudette Colvin Birth Year: 1939 Birth date: September 5, 1939 Birth State: Alabama Birth City: Montgomery Birth Country: United States Gender: Female Best Known For: Claudette Colvin is. By Monday, the day the boycott began, Colvin had already been airbrushed from the official version of events. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to. [2] Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. 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. Respectfully and faithfully yours. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. Funeral Services will be held Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. at the Ft. Deposit Municipal Complex with Pastor. [2][13] Not long after, in September 1952, Colvin started attending Booker T. Washington High School. Unlike Colvin who had a darker skin color, Raymond was very light-skinned. 45.148.121.138 There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Colvin has remained unmarried all her life. 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. But go to King Hill and mention her name, and the first thing they will tell you is that she was the first. In 1955, at age 15, Claudette Colvin . [2] Colvin and her sister referred to the Colvins as their parents and took their last name. "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. "New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama. 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. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman. 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." In July 2014, Claudette Colvin's story was documented in a television episode of Drunk History (Montgomery, AL (Season 2, Episode 1)). Parks became one of Time Magazine's 100 most important people of the 20th century . [30] Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 23:25. "The light-skinned girls always thought they were better looking," says Colvin. She made history at the young age of 15 by refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white woman. [11][12], Two days before Colvin's 13th birthday, Delphine died of polio. "I make up stories to convince them to stay in bed." Her voice is soft and high, almost shrill. "They put him on death row." 83 Year Old #3. 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. "I wasn't with it at all. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. In this respect, the civil rights movement in Montgomery moved fast. She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. Clubs called special meetings and discussed the event with some degree of alarm. Others say it is because she was a foul-mouthed tearaway. Her pastor was called and came to pick her up. .css-m6thd4{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;display:block;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;font-family:Gilroy,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;color:#323232;text-transform:capitalize;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-m6thd4:hover{color:link-hover;}}How the Greensboro Four Began the Sit-In Movement, Biography: You Need to Know: Bayard Rustin, Biography: You Need to Know: Sylvia Rivera, Biography: You Need to Know: Dorothy Pittman Hughes, 10 Influential Asian American and Pacific Islander Activists. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. But attorney Gray found it all but impossible to find riders who would potentially risk their lives by attaching their names as plaintiffs. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. 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. Later, she would tell a reporter that she would sometimes attend the rallies at the churches. She worked there for 35 years, retiring in 2004. The bus froze. "So I told him I was not going to get up either. 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. 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. "We learned about negro spirituals and recited poems but my social studies teachers went into more detail," she says. ", If that were not enough, the son, Raymond, to whom she would give birth in December, emerged light-skinned: "He came out looking kind of yellow, and then I was ostracised because I wouldn't say who the father was and they thought it was a white man. She relied on the city's buses to get to and from school because her family did not own a car. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. Colvin left Montgomery for New York in 1958, because she had difficulty finding and keeping work after the notoriety of the . 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. ", 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. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. "Move y'all, I want those two seats," he yelled. "But when she was found guilty, her agonised sobs penetrated the atmosphere of the courthouse. A poor, single, pregnant, black, teenage mother who had both taken on the white establishment and fallen foul of the black one. But there were two things about Colvin's stand on that March day that made it significant. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. ", She believes that, if her pregnancy had been the only issue, they would have found a way to overcome it. This movement took place in the United States. Another cracked a joke about her bra size. She works the night shift and sleeps "when the sleep falls on her" during the day. She was 15. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack at age 37. [39] Later, Rev. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. She was detained on March 2, 1955, in . It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. After her minister paid her bail, she went home where she and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation. [50], In 2022, a biopic of Colvin titled Spark written by Niceole R. Levy and directed by Anthony Mackie was announced. "I told Mrs Parks, as I had told other leaders in Montgomery, that I thought the Claudette Colvin arrest was a good test case to end segregation on the buses," says Fred Gray, Parks's lawyer. [47], A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. "We walked downtown and my friends and I saw the bus and decided to get on, it was right across the road from Dr Martin Luther King's church," Colvin says. She still has one - a handwritten note from William Harris in Sacramento. Read about our approach to external linking. How encouraging it would be if more adults had your courage, self-respect and integrity. BBC World Service. I knew what was happening, but I just kept trying to shut it out.". When Claudette Colvin's high school in Montgomery, Alabama, observed Negro History Week in 1955, the 15-year-old had no way of knowing how the stories of Black freedom fighters would soon impact . She worked there for 35 years until her . I was glad that an adult had finally stood up to the system, but I felt left out.. She retired in 2004. Most Popular #5576. Four years later, they executed him. She had sons named Raymond and Randy. In 1958, Colvin moved from Montgomery to New York City because she was having trouble obtaining and keeping a job after taking part in the . This made her very scared that they would sexually assault her because this happened frequently. Rosa Parks stated: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. She also had become pregnant and they thought an unwed mother would attract too much negative attention in a public legal battle. 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. Rosa Parks was neither a victim nor a saint, but a long-standing political activist and feminist. 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. By then I didnt have much time for celebrating anyway. 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 Colvin did exactly the same thing. In New York, Colvin gave birth to another son, Randy. It is time for President Obama to award Colvin the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian honor, to recognize her sacrifice and passionate dedication to social justice. Parks was, too. I was afraid they might rape me. Angry protests erupt over Greek rail disaster, Explosive found in check-in luggage at US airport, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. [20] In a later interview, she said: "We couldn't try on clothes. Born on September 5 #12. Parks," her former attorney, Fred Gray, told Newsweek. [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. It wasn't a bad area, but it had a reputation." "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. ", "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day," said Rosa Parks. 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. In this lesson, students will learn about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old who stood up for equal rights in 1955. 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). 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.". "[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 felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. She sat down in the front of the bus and refused to move on her own will when asked. She was played by Mariah Iman Wilson. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. "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. In this small, elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches and watch an impoverished world go by. Fifty years have passed since campaigners overturned a ban on ethnic minorities working on buses in one British city. While Parks has been heralded as a civil rights heroine, Colvin's story has received little notice. He contacted Montgomery Councilmen Charles Jinright and Tracy Larkin, and in 2017, the Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. I don't know how I got off that bus but the other students said they manhandled me off the bus and put me in the squad car. Claudette Colvin is an activist who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s. Letters of support came from as far afield as Oregon and California. [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. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming . In 2009, the writer Phillip Hoose published a book that told her story in detail for the first time. 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. [43] The judge ordered that the juvenile record be expunged and destroyed in December 2021, stating that Colvin's refusal had "been recognized as a courageous act on her behalf and on behalf of a community of affected people". Her son Raymond Colvin died of a heart attack in 1993. Read about our approach to external linking. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' "He asked us both to get up. 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. 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. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats.". Blake persisted. Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. 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. The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of college. "She lived in a little shack. [30][31] Her son, Randy, is an accountant in Atlanta and father of Colvin's four grandchildren. [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.' A year later, on 20 December 1956, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation on the buses must end. Ms. Colvin in New York on Feb. 5, 2009. 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. Today their boycott, modelled on the one in Montgomery, is largely forgotten - but it was a milestone in achieving equality. asked the policeman. Somehow, as Mrs. Associated With. The legal case turned on the testimony of four plaintiffs, one of whom was Claudette Colvin. If I had told my father who did it, he would have killed him. ", A personal tragedy for her was seen as a political liability by the town's civil rights leaders. "There was segregation everywhere. [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. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement tried to keep up appearances and make the "most appealing" protesters the most seen. 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". So, Colvin and her younger sister, Delphine, were taken in by their great aunt and uncle, Mary Anne and Q. P. Colvin whose daughter, Velma Colvin, had already moved out. But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. She withdrew from college, and struggled in the local environment. ", They took her to City Hall, where she was charged with misconduct, resisting arrest and violating the city segregation laws. She concentrated her mind on things she had been learning at school. He was drug-addicted and alcoholic and passed away of a cardiac attack in Colvin's apartment. "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. And, like Parks, the local black establishment started to rally support nationwide for her cause. Her timing was superb. And, from there, the short distance to sanctity: they called her "Saint Rosa", "an angel walking", "a heaven-sent messenger". "They just dropped me. [39], In 2019, a statue of Rosa Parks was unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama, and four granite markers were also unveiled near the statue on the same day to honor four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, including Colvin[40][41][42], In 2021 Colvin applied to the family court in Montgomery County, Alabama to have her juvenile record expunged. 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