Claudette Colvin in 2009. Claudette Colvin was the first person arrested by the police in Montgomery, AL for refusing to give up her bus seat. Nonetheless, Raymond died at the age of 37, reported Core Online. Colvin has retired from her job and has been living her life. [15], In 1955, Colvin was a student at the segregated Booker T. Washington High School in the city. To the exclusively male and predominantly middle-class, church-dominated, local black leadership in Montgomery, she was a fallen woman. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman.'" 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. 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. She withdrew from college, and struggled in the local environment. 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. "Aren't you going to get up?" They never came and discussed it with my parents. Yet months before her arrest on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a 15-year-old girl was charged with the same 'crime'. "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." I started protecting my crotch. 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. '", The atmosphere on the bus became very tense. Second, she was the first person, in Montgomery at least, to take up the challenge. Blake approached her. Later, she would tell a reporter that she would sometimes attend the rallies at the churches. 9. She worked there for 35 years until her . 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. I heard about the court decision on the news, Colvin recalled. [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. It was a journey not only into history but also mythology. "Always studying and using long words.". Soon afterwards, on 5 December, 40,000 African-American bus passengers boycotted the system and that afternoon, black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), electing a young pastor, Martin Luther King Jr, as their president. Four years later, they executed him. He was . [citation needed]. And, like Parks, the local black establishment started to rally support nationwide for her cause. Others say it is because she was a foul-mouthed tearaway. Claudette had two sons named Raymond and Randy Colvin, and her first pregnancy was at the age of 16 with a much older man. She sat in the colored section about two seats away from an emergency exit, in a Capitol Heights bus. [17][18][6] This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. "When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. "Never. Before the Rosa Parks incident took place, Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging the bus segregation system. Going to a segregated school had one advantage, she found - her teachers gave her a good grounding in black history. 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. ", 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. Phillip Hoose. 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. So he turned on the black men sitting behind her. 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. "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. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. "It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing.". ", She believes that, if her pregnancy had been the only issue, they would have found a way to overcome it. Two years later, Colvin moved to New York City, where she had her second son, Randy, and worked as a nurse's aide at a Manhattan nursing home. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. Listen to Claudette Colvin's interview on Outlook on the BBC World Service. First Name Claudette #1. The driver, James Blake, turned around and ordered the black passengers to go to the back of the bus, so that the whites could take their places. "She was not the first person to be arrested for violation of the bus seating ordinance," said J Mills Thornton, an author and academic. "Middle-class blacks looked down on King Hill," says Colvin today. Phillip Hoose is author of Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice., On March2, 1955, a young African American woman boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., took her seat and, minutes later, refused the drivers command to surrender it to a white passenger. Until recently, none of her workmates knew anything of her pioneering role in the civil rights movement. The driver looked at the women in his mirror. She was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested by the two policemen, Thomas J. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. She also had become pregnant and they thought an unwed mother would attract too much negative attention in a public legal battle. On 2 March 1955, Colvin and her friends finished their classes and were let out of school early. For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. "It's interesting that Claudette Colvin was not in the group, and rarely, if ever, rode a bus again in Montgomery," wrote Frank Sikora, an Alabama-based academic and author. He was born on March 3, 1931, in Mound City, S.D., the son of Alfred Gunderson and Verna Johnson Gunderson. I didn't get up, because I didn't feel like I was breaking the law. ", Some in Montgomery, particularly in King Hill, think the decision was informed by snobbery. ", When the boycott was over and the African-American community had emerged victorious, King, Nixon and Parks appeared for the cameras. "So did the teachers, too. ", But even as she inspired awe throughout the country, elders within Montgomery's black community began to doubt her suitability as a standard-bearer of the movement. Gary Younge investigates, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1897c67fea0e3a "The white people were always seated at the front of the bus and the black people were seated at the back of the bus. Colvin was a member of the NAACP Youth Council and had been learning about the civil rights movement in school. 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. Read about our approach to external linking. Claudette Colvin's birthstone is Sapphire. This made her very scared that they would sexually assault her because this happened frequently. "So I told him I was not going to get up, either. And, like the pregnant Mrs Hamilton, many African-Americans refused to tolerate the indignity of the South's racist laws in silence. 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. [47], A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. Colvin says that after Supreme Court made its decision, things slowly began to change. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. "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. Browder vs Gayle Claudette Colvin, Aurelia S Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanette Reese were plaintiffs in the court case of Browder vs Gayle. She appreciated, but never embraced, King's strategy of nonviolent resistance, remains a keen supporter of Malcolm X and was constantly frustrated by sexism in the movement. The full enormity of what she had done was only just beginning to dawn on her. 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 . The other three moved, but another black woman, Ruth Hamilton, who was pregnant, got on and sat next to Colvin. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to. Colvin has remained unmarried all her life. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. Born in Alabama #33. asked the policeman. Colvin's sister, Gloria Laster, said. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. "Claudette gave all of us moral courage. Taylor Branch. 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. 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. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed the District Court decision on November 13, 1956. "They did think I was nutty and crazy.". (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press). We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. 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. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to breaking the law. She shops with her workmates and watches action movies on video. "She had been yelling, 'It's my constitutional right!'. But people in King Hill do not remember Colvin as that type of girl, and the accusation irritates Colvin to this day. He could not bring himself to chide Mrs Hamilton in her condition, but he could not allow her to stay where she was and flout the law as he understood it, either. 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. [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. I was thinking, Hey, I did that months ago, Colvin recalled. "I would sit in the back and no one would even know I was there. ", The upshot was that Colvin was left in an incredibly vulnerable position. It was believed that a venomous snake would die if placed in a vessel made of sapphire. They just didn't want to know me. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history? I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail," she says. [2] Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. She refused to name the father or have anything to do with him. Telephones rang. "[33] "I'm not disappointed. 45.148.121.138 "Are you going to stand up?" Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. In a United States district court, she testified before the three-judge panel that heard the case. . In a letter published shortly before Shabbaz's death, she wrote to Parks with both praise and perspective: "'Standing up' was not even being the first to protest that indignity. But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. [30] Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. 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. ", 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. Colvin's son Raymond died in 1993. Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. "They just dropped me. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. [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. "He asked us both to get up. 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. "[22] Colvin was handcuffed, arrested, and forcibly removed from the bus. 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. Colvin. She needed support. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her . 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 . "I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on. A 15-year-old high school student at the time, Colvin got fed up and refused to move even before Parks. 05 September 1939 - Court trial. The three black passengers sitting alongside Parks rose reluctantly. She had sons named Raymond and Randy. [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. "I waited for about three hours until my mother arrived with my pastor to bail me out. Somehow, as Mrs. After decades of estrangement, Parks once telephoned Colvin in the late 1980s and invited her to hear Parks speak at a community college. Although some of the details might seem familiar, this is not the Rosa Parks story. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. 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. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. 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. Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist who, before .css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}Rosa Parks, refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. "We just sat there and waited for it all to happen," says Gloria Hardin, who was on the bus, too. [2][13] Not long after, in September 1952, Colvin started attending Booker T. Washington High School. 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. [46], Young adult book Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip Hoose, was published in 2009 and won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. 83 Year Old #3. In his Pulitzer prize-winning account of the civil rights years, Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch wrote: "Even if Montgomery Negroes were willing to rally behind an unwed, pregnant teenager - which they were not - her circumstances would make her an extremely vulnerable standard bearer. 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. "The NAACP had come back to me and my mother said: 'Claudette, they must really need you, because they rejected you because you had a child out of wedlock,'" Colvin says. "But when she was found guilty, her agonised sobs penetrated the atmosphere of the courthouse. ", They took her to City Hall, where she was charged with misconduct, resisting arrest and violating the city segregation laws. I was crying," she says. But, as she recalls her teenage years after the arrest and the pregnancy, she hovers between resentment, sadness and bewilderment at the way she was treated. A memorial service will be held at 11:00 AM, Saturday, March 4, 2023, at East Juliette . Parks was, too. - Claudette Colvin On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. 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. Meanwhile, Parks had been transformed from a politically-conscious activist to an upstanding, unfortunate Everywoman. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. She relied on the city's buses to get to and from school because her family did not own a car. This movement took place in the United States. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. "There was segregation everywhere. "For nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity. 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. ", Not so Colvin. That's what they usually did.". 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. Today, she sits in a diner in the Bronx, her pudding-basin haircut framing a soft face with a distant smile. Born on September 5 #12. She was 15. She became quiet and withdrawn. Anything to detach herself from the horror of reality. 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. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. 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. Civil Rights Leader #7. Like Colvin, Parks refused, and was arrested and fined. The bus went three stops before several white passengers got on. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot and take it to the store". 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. It was an exchange later credited with changing the racial landscape of America. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. 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 once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of college. 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. "She had remained calm all during the days of her waiting period and during the trial," wrote Robinson. 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. 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. Two police officers arrived and pulled her from her seat. The court declared her a ward of the state and remanded her to the custody of her family. She still has one - a handwritten note from William Harris in Sacramento. [4][18] Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. The driver wanted all of them to move to the back and stand so that the white passenger could sit. So, you know, I think you compare history, likemost historians say Columbus discovered America, and it was already populated. 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 But there were two things about Colvin's stand on that March day that made it significant. Colvin gave birth to her first son Raymond Jun 5, 1956. In New York, Colvin gave birth to another son, Randy. As well as the predictable teenage fantasy of "marrying a baseball player", she also had strong political convictions. I was sitting on the last seat that they said you could sit in. Rosa Parks was neither a victim nor a saint, but a long-standing political activist and feminist. 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. 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