Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. But go to King Hill and mention her name, and the first thing they will tell you is that she was the first. If I had told my father who did it, he would have killed him. She and her son Raymond moved in with Velma while Colvin looked for work. 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. 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). She turns, watches, wipes, feeds and washes the elderly patients and offers them a gentle, consoling word when they become disoriented. That left Colvin. The discussions in the black community began to focus on black enterprise rather than integration, although national civil rights legislation did not pass until 1964 and 1965. Blake approached her. "He wanted me to give up my seat for a white person and I would have done it for an elderly person but this was a young white woman. "Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' 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. In 1955, at age 15, Claudette Colvin . Mothers expressed concern about permitting their children on the buses. On June 5, 1956, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama issued a ruling declaring the state of Alabama and Montgomery's laws mandating public bus segregation as unconstitutional. [2][14] Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. "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. The policeman grabbed her and took her to a patrolman's car in which his colleagues were waiting. 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". [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. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. After training, she landed a job as a nurses aide in a Catholic hospital in Manhattan. They never came and discussed it with my parents. Virgo Civil Rights Leader #2. [16] Referring to the segregation on the bus and the white woman: "She couldn't sit in the same row as us because that would mean we were as good as her". "If any of you are not gentlemen enough to give a lady a seat, you should be put in jail yourself," he said. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. Claudette Colvin : biography. 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." "But when she was found guilty, her agonised sobs penetrated the atmosphere of the courthouse. "So I told him I was not going to get up either. 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. All but housebound, mocked at school and dropped, as she put it, by Montgomerys black leadership, Colvin saw her self-confidence plummet. The court declared her a ward of the state and remanded her to the custody of her family. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one. 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. The record of her arrest and adjudication of delinquency was expunged by the district court in 2021, with the support of the district attorney for the county in which the charges were brought more than 66 years before. "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. Colvin was not invited officially for the formal dedication of the museum, which opened to the public in September 2016. [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. The urban bustle surrounding her could not seem further away from King Hill. Read about our approach to external linking. She worked there for 35 years, retiring in 2004. When the white seats were filled, the driver, J Fred Black, asked Parks and three others to give up their seats. That's what they usually did.". Gary Younge investigates, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history? ", Montgomery's black establishment leaders decided they would have to wait for the right person. She was played by Mariah Iman Wilson. "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.". She resisted bus segregation nine months before Rosa Parks, . [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. Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. She was convicted on all charges, appealed and lost again. "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. Colvin was a kid. Charged with disturbing the peace, breaking the bus segregation laws and assaulting the officers who had apprehended her, she was released later that night. [15], In 1955, Colvin was a student at the segregated Booker T. Washington High School in the city. 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. History had me glued to the seat.. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. It was an exchange later credited with changing the racial landscape of America. 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. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to breaking the law. Parks stayed put. [21], She also said in the 2009 book Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice, by Phillip Hoose, that one of the police officers sat in the back seat with her. 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. [4], "The bus was getting crowded, and I remember the bus driver looking through the rearview mirror asking her [Colvin] to get up for the white woman, which she didn't," said Annie Larkins Price, a classmate of Colvin. He was so light-skinned (like his father) that people frequently said she had a baby by a white man. 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. 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. In the 2010s, Larkin arranged for a street to be named after Colvin. [16], Through the trial Colvin was represented by Fred Gray, a lawyer for the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which was organizing civil rights actions. Rosa didnt give me enough time to put in for a day off, she recalled. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. To the exclusively male and predominantly middle-class, church-dominated, local black leadership in Montgomery, she was a fallen woman. It was a journey not only into history but also mythology. The young Ms. Colvin was portrayed by actress Mariah Iman Wilson. [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". They just didn't want to know me. "We learned about negro spirituals and recited poems but my social studies teachers went into more detail," she says. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail," she says. "Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom.". 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. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. "They said they didn't want to use a pregnant teenager because it would be controversial and the people would talk about the pregnancy more than the boycott," Colvin says. They sent a delegation to see the commissioner, and after a few meetings they appeared to have reached an understanding that the harassment would stop and that Colvin would be allowed to clear her name. Anything to detach herself from the horror of reality. She gave birth to a fair-skin child named Raymond in the year 1956 whose skin tone was similar to her partner. "Claudette gave all of us moral courage. [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.' New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 23:25. 1939- Claudette was born in Birmingham 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the presidential term of office . "But according to [the commissioner], she was the first person ever to enter a plea of not guilty to such a charge.". 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. "I respect my elders, but I don't respect what they did to Colvin," she says. Going to a segregated school had one advantage, she found - her teachers gave her a good grounding in black history. The Montgomery bus boycott was then called off after a few months. Born on September 5 #12. By then I didnt have much time for celebrating anyway. "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. "She lived in a little shack. Claudette Colvin, 81, was a true pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement. I was crying," she says. "I didn't know if they were crazy, if they were going to take me to a Klan meeting. 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. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. "We didn't know what was going to happen, but we knew something would happen. He was born on March 3, 1931, in Mound City, S.D., the son of Alfred Gunderson and Verna Johnson Gunderson. She spent the next decade going back and forth like a yo-yo between the two cities, she said. Today their boycott, modelled on the one in Montgomery, is largely forgotten - but it was a milestone in achieving equality. "Always studying and using long words.". 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. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. Her parents were Mary Jane Gadson and C.P. "[4][5] Colvin's case was dropped by civil rights campaigners because Colvin was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings. Reeves was a teenage grocery delivery boy who was found having sex with a white woman. 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. "She was a victim of both the forces of history and the forces of destiny," said King, in a quote now displayed in the civil rights museum in Atlanta. Most of the people didn't have problems with us sitting on the bus, most New Yorkers cared about economic problems. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. 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. 45.148.121.138 [6][7] It is now widely accepted that Colvin was not accredited by civil rights campaigners at the time due to her circumstances. Colvin has retired from her job and has been living her life. [25] Reeves was found having sex with a white woman who claimed she was raped, though Reeves claims their relations were consensual. None of them spoke to me; they didn't see if I was okay. "[38], Colvin's role has not gone completely unrecognized. All I could do is cry. 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.". 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. For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. She had sons named Raymond and Randy. Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were both African Americans who sought the abolition of slavery, Tubman was well known for helping 300 fellow slaves escape slavery using the, Truth was a passionate campaigner who fought for women's rights, best known for her speech, Claudette Colvin spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service. Claudette Colvin was born Claudette Austin in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 5, 1939, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin. She earned mostly As in her classes and aspired to become president one day. 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. 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. 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. ", 'Facts speak only when the historian calls on them," wrote the historian EH Carr in his landmark work, What Is History? Colvin's son Raymond died in 1993. "[citation needed], The police officers who took her to the station made sexual comments about her body and took turns guessing her bra size throughout the ride. And I just kept blabbing things out, and I never stopped. Claudette Colvin in 2009. Astrological Sign: Virgo, Article Title: Claudette Colvin Biography, Author: Biography.com Editors, Website Name: The Biography.com website, Url: https://www.biography.com/activists/claudette-colvin, Publisher: A&E; Television Networks, Last Updated: March 26, 2021, Original Published Date: April 2, 2014, I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. 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. After her minister paid her bail, she went home where she and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation. The driver caught a glimpse of them through his mirror. [37], "All we want is the truth, why does history fail to get it right?" In court, Colvin opposed the segregation law by declaring herself not guilty. [2] She was also a member of the NAACP Youth Council, where she formed a close relationship with her mentor, Rosa Parks. ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. [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. 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. Doing when this page, in 1955, Colvin 's pioneering effort further from! 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