"You may do that," said Parks, who is now 87 and lives in Detroit. 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.". Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. While her role in the fight to end segregation in Montgomery may not be widely recognized, Colvin helped advance civil rights efforts in the city. She is a civil rights activist from the 1950s and a retired nurse aide. [24] She was convicted on all three charges in juvenile court. 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. They would have come and seen my parents and found me someone to marry. Your IP: And that person, it transpired, would be Rosa Parks. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. Black people were allowed to occupy those seats so long as white people didn't need them. He was so light-skinned (like his father) that people frequently said she had a baby by a white man. Phillip Hoose also wrote about her in the young adult biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. The policeman grabbed her and took her to a patrolman's car in which his colleagues were waiting. "It is he who decides which facts to give the floor and in what order or context. Colvin has remained unmarried all her life. he asked. Jeanetta Reese later resigned from the case. "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. To sustain the boycott, communities organised carpools and the Montgomery's African-American taxi drivers charged only 10 cents - the same price as bus fare - for fellow African Americans. The problem arose because all the seats on the bus were taken. Her parents were Mary Jane Gadson and C.P. Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. "So did the teachers, too. While Parks has been heralded as a civil rights heroine, Colvin's story has received little notice. "Are you going to stand up?" [29], Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond, in March 1956. She herself didn't talk about it much, but she spoke recently to the BBC. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn't like themselves. They remember her as a confident, studious, young girl with a streak that was rebellious without being boisterous. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail," she says. He was drug-addicted and alcoholic and passed away of a cardiac attack in Colvin's apartment. "I had almost a life history of being rebellious against being mistreated against my colour," she said. The driver caught a glimpse of them through his mirror. 1939- Claudette was born in Birmingham 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the presidential term of office . "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. Before the Rosa Parks incident took place, Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging the bus segregation system. [27], In New York, Colvin and her son Raymond initially lived with her older sister, Velma Colvin. Growing up in one of Montgomery's poorer neighborhoods, Colvin studied hard in school. Civil Rights Leader #7. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. 10. Mothers expressed concern about permitting their children on the buses. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to breaking the law. The police arrived and convinced a black man sitting behind the two women to move so that Mrs. Hamilton could move back, but Colvin still refused to move. But go to King Hill and mention her name, and the first thing they will tell you is that she was the first. 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. [5] Colvin did not receive the same attention as Parks for a number of reasons: she did not have "good hair", she was not fair-skinned, she was a teenager, she was pregnant. In August that year, a 14-year-old boy called Emmet Till had said, "Bye, baby", to a woman at a store in nearby Mississippi, and was fished out of the nearby Tallahatchie river a few days later, dead with a bullet in his skull, his eye gouged out and one side of his forehead crushed. She retired in 2004. "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. Today their boycott, modelled on the one in Montgomery, is largely forgotten - but it was a milestone in achieving equality. Colvin says Parks had the right image to become the face of resistance to segregation because of her previous work with the NAACP. "He asked us both to get up. One incident in particular preoccupied her at the time - the plight of her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. As more white passengers got on, the driver asked black people to give up their seats. On 2 March 1955, Colvin and her friends finished their classes and were let out of school early. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. Tour: Black America and the burden of the perfect victim. Most Americans, even in Montgomery, have never heard of her. 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. A memorial service will be held at 11:00 AM, Saturday, March 4, 2023, at East Juliette . In this respect, the civil rights movement in Montgomery moved fast. Claudette Colvin, a civil rights pioneer who in March 1955, at the age of 15, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White person on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, is seeking to get her . 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. "Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' She refused to name the father or have anything to do with him. 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. And, like Parks, the local black establishment started to rally support nationwide for her cause. Born on September 5 #12. 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. All Rights Reserved. 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. 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. In July 2014, Claudette Colvin's story was documented in a television episode of Drunk History (Montgomery, AL (Season 2, Episode 1)). She shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated. "They put him on death row." 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. "Oh God," wailed one black woman at the back. Colvin's sister, Gloria Laster, said. Montgomery was not home to the first bus boycott any more than Colvin was the first person to challenge segregation. She withdrew from college, and struggled in the local environment. Betty Shabbaz, the widow of Malcolm X, was one of them. 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 news travelled fast," wrote Robinson. When Austin abandoned the family, Gadson was unable to financially support her children. Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. But somewhere en route they mislaid the truth. "I never swore when I was young," she says. 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." "It took on the form of harassment. 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. By then I didnt have much time for celebrating anyway. "It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing.". "They just dropped me. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."[6][8]. "When ED Nixon and the Women's Political Council of Montgomery recognised that you could be that hero, you met the challenge and changed our lives forever. "In a few hours, every Negro youngster on the streets discussed Colvin's arrest. He was . New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 23:25. This led to a few articles and profiles by others in subsequent 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. They forced her into the back of a squad car, one officer jumping in after her. One white woman defended Colvin to the police; another said that, if she got away with this, "they will take over". 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). But attorney Gray found it all but impossible to find riders who would potentially risk their lives by attaching their names as plaintiffs. I was glued to my seat. "However, the black leadership in Montgomery at the time thought that we should wait. For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. Second, she was the first person, in Montgomery at least, to take up the challenge. 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. ", 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. She shops with her workmates and watches action movies on video. She was born on September 5, 1939. "But according to [the commissioner], she was the first person ever to enter a plea of not guilty to such a charge.". King's role in the boycott transformed him into a national figure of the civil rights movement, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. The other three moved, but another black woman, Ruth Hamilton, who was pregnant, got on and sat next to Colvin. Born in Alabama #33. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her . "Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom.". Though he didn't say it, nobody was going to say that about the then heavily pregnant Colvin. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. 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. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn't even go into the same restaurants," Claudette Colvin says. Some have tried to change that. [39] Later, Rev. But people in King Hill do not remember Colvin as that type of girl, and the accusation irritates Colvin to this day. ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. I was sitting on the last seat that they said you could sit in. By Monday, the day the boycott began, Colvin had already been airbrushed from the official version of events. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. Others say it is because she was a foul-mouthed tearaway. She said she felt as if she was "getting [her] Christmas in January rather than the 25th. After her arrest and late appearance in the court hearing, she was more or less forgotten. Almost nine months after Colvins bus protest, she heard news reports that Parks, a 42-year-old seamstress, had likewise been arrested for a bus seating protest. Four years later, they executed him. [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. How the Greensboro Four Began the Sit-In Movement, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads, Name: Claudette Colvin, Birth Year: 1939, Birth date: September 5, 1939, Birth State: Alabama, Birth City: Montgomery, Birth Country: United States. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history? 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." But while the driver went to get a policeman, it was the white students who started to make noise. Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist of African descent. In this lesson, students will learn about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old who stood up for equal rights in 1955. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. ", Not so Colvin. "He asked us both to get up. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed the District Court decision on November 13, 1956. After her refusal to give up her seat, Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city's segregation laws. function fbl_init(){ Claudette Colvin: The 15-year-old who came before Rosa Parks 10 March 2018 Alamy By Taylor-Dior Rumble BBC World Service In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks defied segregation laws by. [17][18][6] This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. 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 the trial was held, Colvin pleaded innocent but was found guilty and released on indefinite probation in her parents' care. 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. Ms. Colvin in New York on Feb. 5, 2009. She concentrated her mind on things she had been learning at school. It is time for President Obama to. "Always studying and using long words.". "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." 83 Year Old #3. 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