In 1955, at age 15, Claudette Colvin . The case went to the United States Supreme Court on appeal by the state, and it upheld the district court's ruling on November 13, 1956. 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. ", 'Facts speak only when the historian calls on them," wrote the historian EH Carr in his landmark work, What Is History? "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. But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. [36], Colvin and her family have been fighting for recognition for her action. ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. She was 15. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her . asked one. 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. Click to reveal Clubs called special meetings and discussed the event with some degree of alarm. Claudette Colvin's birthstone is Sapphire. In 2009, the writer Phillip Hoose published a book that told her story in detail for the first time. 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. In this respect, the civil rights movement in Montgomery moved fast. "Well, I'm going to have you arrested," he replied. As in 2023, Claudette Colvin's age is 83 years. "I was scared and it was really, really frightening, it was like those Western movies where they put the bandit in the jail cell and you could hear the keys. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. Second, she was the first person, in Montgomery at least, to take up the challenge. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People briefly considered using Colvin's case to challenge the segregation laws, but they decided against it because of her age. "[4][5] Colvin's case was dropped by civil rights campaigners because Colvin was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings. ", Some in Montgomery, particularly in King Hill, think the decision was informed by snobbery. She is a civil rights activist from the 1950s and a retired nurse aide. We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,contact us! . She and her son Raymond moved in with Velma while Colvin looked for work. ", Nonetheless, the shock waves of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond. Phillip Hoose also wrote about her in the young adult biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. "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.". That summer she became pregnant by a much older man. ", When the boycott was over and the African-American community had emerged victorious, King, Nixon and Parks appeared for the cameras. And, like the pregnant Mrs Hamilton, many African-Americans refused to tolerate the indignity of the South's racist laws in silence. 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. "It was partly because of her colour and because she was from the working poor," says Gwen Patton, who has been involved in civil rights work in Montgomery since the early 60s. She withdrew from college, and struggled in the local environment. The United States District Court ruled the state of Alabama and Montgomery's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. 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. However, some white passengers still refused to sit near a black person. Colvin's sister, Gloria Laster, said. 9. Colvin later moved to New York City and worked as a nurse's aide. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. "She had remained calm all during the days of her waiting period and during the trial," wrote Robinson. Her parents were Mary Jane Gadson and C.P. ", 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. I can still vividly hear the click of those keys. While this does not happen by conspiracy, it is often facilitated by collusion. CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST, 81, BIRMINGHAM, AL. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. Most Americans, even in Montgomery, have never heard of 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. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) [1] [2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. 1939- Claudette was born in Birmingham 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the presidential term of office . ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. "[38], Colvin's role has not gone completely unrecognized. [24] She was convicted on all three charges in juvenile court. In 1960, she gave birth to her second son, Randy. I started protecting my crotch. "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." One month later, the Supreme Court affirmed the order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation. Unable to find work in Montgomery, Colvin moved to New York in 1958, while her son Raymond remained behind with family. 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. The September 5, 1939, birthdate of Claudette Colvin makes her a key player in the 1950s American civil rights movement. 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. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed the District Court decision on November 13, 1956. He was drug-addicted and alcoholic and passed away of a cardiac attack in Colvin's apartment. Black people were allowed to occupy those seats so long as white people didn't need them. The young Ms. Colvin was portrayed by actress Mariah Iman Wilson. "Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom.". So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. It was believed that a venomous snake would die if placed in a vessel made of sapphire. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn't like themselves. She worked there for 35 years, retiring in 2004. 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. March 2 was named Claudette Colvin Day in Montgomery. "Claudette gave all of us moral courage. "If it had been for an old lady, I would have got up, but it wasn't. A poor, single, pregnant, black, teenage mother who had both taken on the white establishment and fallen foul of the black one. Two policemen boarded the bus and asked Colvin why she wouldn't give up her seat. Just as her case was beginning to catch the nation's imagination, she became pregnant. . That left Colvin. By then I didnt have much time for celebrating anyway. Although some of the details might seem familiar, this is not the Rosa Parks story. He was born on March 3, 1931, in Mound City, S.D., the son of Alfred Gunderson and Verna Johnson Gunderson. "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. But attorney Gray found it all but impossible to find riders who would potentially risk their lives by attaching their names as plaintiffs. On 2 March 1955, Colvin and her friends finished their classes and were let out of school early. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1897c67fea0e3a "I didn't know if they were crazy, if they were going to take me to a Klan meeting. Claudette Colvin's birth flower is Aster/Myosotis. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to breaking the law. Though he didn't say it, nobody was going to say that about the then heavily pregnant Colvin. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. In the 2010s, Larkin arranged for a street to be named after Colvin. We used to have a lot of juke joints up there, and maybe men would drink too much and get into a fight. I didn't get up, because I didn't feel like I was breaking the law. But while the driver went to get a policeman, it was the white students who started to make noise. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack, aged 37. 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. [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. As civil rights attorney Fred Gray put it, Claudette gave all of us moral courage. "She was a bookworm," says Gloria Hardin, who went to school with Colvin and who still lives in King Hill. "I became very active in her youth group and we use to meet every Sunday afternoon at the Luther church," she says. "Move y'all, I want those two seats," he yelled. [28] Colvin stated she was branded a troublemaker by many in her community. "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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. "They just dropped me. Reeves was a teenage grocery delivery boy who was found having sex with a white woman. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail," she says. 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. For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. Associated With. Another cracked a joke about her bra size. I was thinking, Hey, I did that months ago, Colvin recalled. The story of Colvins courage might have been forgotten forever had not Frank Sikora, a Birmingham newspaper reporter assigned in 1975 to write a retrospective of the bus boycott, remembered that there had been a girl arrested before Parks. 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. At the time, black leaders, including the Rev. She was played by Mariah Iman Wilson. None of them spoke to me; they didn't see if I was okay. 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. Claudette Colvin was born Claudette Austin in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 5, 1939, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin. One incident in particular preoccupied her at the time - the plight of her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves. Rosa Parks stated: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. Claudette Colvin in 2009. ", The upshot was that Colvin was left in an incredibly vulnerable position. "When I was in the ninth grade, all the police cars came to get Jeremiah," says Colvin. After her arrest and late appearance in the court hearing, she was more or less forgotten. She concentrated her mind on things she had been learning at school. The death news of Colvin, which has been going on the Internet, is untrue; she is alive and is 83. "I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on. Complexity, with all its nuances and shaded realities, is a messy business. Her pastor was called and came to pick her up. Some people questioned if the father was a white male. [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. By Monday, the day the boycott began, Colvin had already been airbrushed from the official version of events. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. Despite the light sentence, Colvin could not escape the court of public opinion. Mothers expressed concern about permitting their children on the buses. Letters of support came from as far afield as Oregon and California. He was so light-skinned (like his father) that people frequently said she had a baby by a white man. But it is also a rare and excellent one that gives her more than a passing, dismissive mention. "She was not the first person to be arrested for violation of the bus seating ordinance," said J Mills Thornton, an author and academic. "He asked us both to get up. She spent the next decade going back and forth like a yo-yo between the two cities, she said. Rosa Parks was neither a victim nor a saint, but a long-standing political activist and feminist. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. While Parks has been heralded as a civil rights heroine, Colvin's story has received little notice. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. Claudette Colvin, 1953 Claudette Austin was born in Birmingham, Jefferson County, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin on September 5, 1939.Her father abandoned the family, which included a sister, when she was a small child, and the two girls went to live in Pine Level, Montgomery County, with an aunt and uncle, Mary Anne and Q. P. Colvin.Both children took the Colvin name as their last name . Others say it is because she was a foul-mouthed tearaway. Montgomery was not home to the first bus boycott any more than Colvin was the first person to challenge segregation. So he turned on the black men sitting behind her. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to. Her son, Raymond, was born in March 1956. She was detained on March 2, 1955, in . She says she expected some abuse from the driver, but nothing more. He was executed for his alleged crimes. Colvins feisty testimony was instrumental in the shocking success of the suit, which ended segregated seating on Montgomerys buses. The boycott was very effective but the city still resisted complying with protesters' demands - an end to the policy preventing the hiring of black bus drivers and the introduction of first-come first-seated rule. Parks was, too. Broken-down cars sit outside tumble-down houses. The three other girls got up; Colvin stayed put. Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. 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. Born on September 5 #12. Colvin took her seat near the emergency door next to one black girl; two others sat across the aisle from her. It was not your tired feet, but your strength of character and resolve that inspired us." 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. She retired in 2004. "[22] Colvin was handcuffed, arrested, and forcibly removed from the bus. He contacted Montgomery Councilmen Charles Jinright and Tracy Larkin, and in 2017, the Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. It is this that incenses Patton. The court, however, ruled against her and put her on probation. Before the Rosa Parks incident took place, Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging the bus segregation system. Rita Dove penned the poem "Claudette Colvin Goes to Work," which later became a song. If I had told my father who did it, he would have killed him. [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 shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated. Today, she sits in a diner in the Bronx, her pudding-basin haircut framing a soft face with a distant smile. Austin, but she was raised by her great-aunt and great-uncle, Mary Ann and Q.P. It is time for President Obama to. The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of college. Rembert said, "I know people have heard her name before, but I just thought we should have a day to celebrate her." She has literally become a footnote in history. She gave birth to a fair-skin child named Raymond in the year 1956 whose skin tone was similar to her partner. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman.'" [39] Later, Rev. 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. It was an exchange later credited with changing the racial landscape of America. She prayed furiously as they sped out, with the cop leering over her, guessing at her bra size. It reads: "The wonderful thing which you have just done makes me feel like a craven coward. American civil rights pioneer and former nurse's aide Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939. image credit; BBC. One white woman defended Colvin to the police; another said that, if she got away with this, "they will take over". 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. 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." 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. 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. The driver caught a glimpse of them through his mirror. "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. The driver wanted all of them to move to the back and stand so that the white passenger could sit. 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. 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. You can't sugarcoat it. [23] She was bailed out by her minister, who told her that she had brought the revolution to Montgomery. 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. 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. I was sitting on the last seat that they said you could sit in. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 23:25. Colvin has remained unmarried all her life. For months, Montgomerys NAACP chapter had been looking for a court case to test the constitutionality of the bus laws. "Mrs Parks was a married woman," said ED Nixon. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. And, like Parks, the local black establishment started to rally support nationwide for her cause. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history? This movement took place in the United States. 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. Under the twisted logic of segregation the white woman still couldn't sit down, as then white and black passengers would have been sharing a row of seats - and the whole point was that white passengers were meant to be closer to the front. In July 2014, Claudette Colvin's story was documented in a television episode of Drunk History (Montgomery, AL (Season 2, Episode 1)). [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. 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