Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. She refused to name the father or have anything to do with him. Though he didn't say it, nobody was going to say that about the then heavily pregnant Colvin. 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 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. Like Colvin, Parks was commuting home and was seated in the "coloured section" of the bus. The bus froze. "I remember during Easter one year, I was to get a pair of black patent shoes but you could only get them from the white stores, so my mother drew the outline of my feet on a brown paper bag in order to get the closest size, because we weren't allowed to go in the store to try them on.". In this small, elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches and watch an impoverished world go by. [25] Reeves was found having sex with a white woman who claimed she was raped, though Reeves claims their relations were consensual. "It is he who decides which facts to give the floor and in what order or context. 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." 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. She worked there for 35 years until her . State and local officials appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. Most Americans, even in Montgomery, have never heard of her. For months, Montgomerys NAACP chapter had been looking for a court case to test the constitutionality of the bus laws. And, from there, the short distance to sanctity: they called her "Saint Rosa", "an angel walking", "a heaven-sent messenger". "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." She needed support. 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.". 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. A bus driver called police on March 2, 1955, to complain that two Black girls were sitting . 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. And I just kept blabbing things out, and I never stopped. Somehow, as Mrs. 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 has said, "Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all. Fifty years have passed since campaigners overturned a ban on ethnic minorities working on buses in one British city. It was her individual courage that triggered the collective display of defiance that turned a previously unknown 26-year-old preacher, Martin Luther King, into a household name. Officers were called to the scene and Colvin was forcefully taken off of the bus and . Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus." Civil Rights Leader #7. Despite the light sentence, Colvin could not escape the court of public opinion. One incident in particular preoccupied her at the time - the plight of her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves. For several hours, she sat in jail, completely terrified. [2] Colvin and her sister referred to the Colvins as their parents and took their last name. By the time she got home, her parents already knew. Men instructed their wives to walk or to share rides in neighbour's autos.". 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. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. She fell out of history altogether. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman. I was glued to my seat," she later told Newsweek. "Never. Despite her personal challenges, Colvin became one of the four plaintiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case, along with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith (Jeanatta Reese, who was initially named a plaintiff in the case, withdrew early on due to outside pressure). Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one. "I will take you off," said the policeman, then he kicked her. They never came and discussed it with my parents. "Middle-class blacks looked down on King Hill," says Colvin today. Colvin's sister, Gloria Laster, said. 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. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' Today their boycott, modelled on the one in Montgomery, is largely forgotten - but it was a milestone in achieving equality. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. Rita Dove penned the poem "Claudette Colvin Goes to Work," which later became a song. This occurred nine months before the more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.[3]. "They put him on death row." Joseph Rembert said, "If nobody did anything for Claudette Colvin in the past why don't we do something for her right now?" Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a retired American nurse aide who was a pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement. "In a few hours, every Negro youngster on the streets discussed Colvin's arrest. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." "He asked us both to get up. 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). Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack, aged 37. All I could do is cry. [2][14] Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. 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. Telephones rang. Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. The other three moved, but another black woman, Ruth Hamilton, who was pregnant, got on and sat next to Colvin. Her casting as the prim, ageing, guileless seamstress with her hair in a bun who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time denied her track record of militancy and feminism. 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 was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested by the two policemen, Thomas J. [2][13] Not long after, in September 1952, Colvin started attending Booker T. Washington High School. "When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. "I respect my elders, but I don't respect what they did to Colvin," she says. As civil rights attorney Fred Gray put it, Claudette gave all of us moral courage. In New York, Colvin gave birth to another son, Randy. The bus went three stops before several white passengers got on. [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.' 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. A year later, on 20 December 1956, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation on the buses must end. 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. Martin Luther King Jr., had been seeking to stir the outrage of African Americans and sympathetic whites into civic action. 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. "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. This led to a few articles and profiles by others in subsequent years. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement tried to keep up appearances and make the "most appealing" protesters the most seen. 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. The driver wanted all of them to move to the back and stand so that the white passenger could sit. "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. Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in the first federal court case filed by civil rights attorney Fred Gray on February 1, 1956, as Browder v. Gayle, to challenge bus segregation in the city. She was fingerprinted, denied a phone call and locked into a cell. Nor was Colvin the last to be passed over. I was sitting on the last seat that they said you could sit in. "We didn't know what was going to happen, but we knew something would happen. She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. She spent the next decade going back and forth like a yo-yo between the two cities, she said. Claudette Colvin, 81, was a true pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement. "You may do that," said Parks, who is now 87 and lives in Detroit. "[4][5] Colvin's case was dropped by civil rights campaigners because Colvin was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings. "Claudette gave all of us moral courage. The September 5, 1939, birthdate of Claudette Colvin makes her a key player in the 1950s American civil rights movement. The court declared her a ward of the state and remanded her to the custody of her family. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. 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. 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. 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. Parks became one of Time Magazine's 100 most important people of the 20th century . It was a case of 'bourgey' blacks looking down on the working-class blacks. "It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing.". She shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. asked one. That left Colvin. It was not your tired feet, but your strength of character and resolve that inspired us." [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. He was drug-addicted and alcoholic and passed away of a cardiac attack in Colvin's apartment. "So did the teachers, too. The full enormity of what she had done was only just beginning to dawn on her. They just didn't want to know me. ", They took her to City Hall, where she was charged with misconduct, resisting arrest and violating the city segregation laws. Colvin took her seat near the emergency door next to one black girl; two others sat across the aisle from her. And that person, it transpired, would be Rosa Parks. Parks," her former attorney, Fred Gray, told Newsweek. 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. Her rhythm is simple and lifestyle frugal. Most of the people didn't have problems with us sitting on the bus, most New Yorkers cared about economic problems. ", A personal tragedy for her was seen as a political liability by the town's civil rights leaders. Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. Colvin later moved to New York City and worked as a nurse's aide. 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. 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. She is a civil rights activist from the 1950s and a retired nurse aide. [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. Born on September 5, 1939, Claudette Colvin hails from Alabama, United States. Blake persisted. "There was no assault", Price said. She prayed furiously as they sped out, with the cop leering over her, guessing at her bra size. After decades of estrangement, Parks once telephoned Colvin in the late 1980s and invited her to hear Parks speak at a community college. [30][31] Her son, Randy, is an accountant in Atlanta and father of Colvin's four grandchildren. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. "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. Had been seeking to stir the outrage of African Americans and sympathetic whites into action! An African American civil rights Movement accountant in Atlanta and father of Colvin 's pioneering.! Person, it 's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady bus went stops... 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