And that person, it transpired, would be Rosa Parks. But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. [6][7] It is now widely accepted that Colvin was not accredited by civil rights campaigners at the time due to her circumstances. 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. 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. 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 . How encouraging it would be if more adults had your courage, self-respect and integrity. She turns, watches, wipes, feeds and washes the elderly patients and offers them a gentle, consoling word when they become disoriented. She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. 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. "They put him on death row." "Aren't you going to get up?" She dreamed of becoming the President of the United States. I was crying," she says. ", To complicate matters, a pregnant black woman, Mrs Hamilton, got on and sat next to Colvin. The organisation didn't want a teenager in the role, she says. Betty Shabbaz, the widow of Malcolm X, was one of them. Claudette Colvin became a teenage mother in 1956 when she gave birth to a boy named Raymond. 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. "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats," he said. "I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on. Claudette Colvin in 2009. Anything to detach herself from the horror of reality. Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. 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. (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press). I was thinking, Hey, I did that months ago, Colvin recalled. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."[6][8]. Colvin was a kid. Then, they will reflect on a time when they took a stand on an important issue. She and her son Raymond moved in with Velma while Colvin looked for work. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. "They just dropped me. 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). Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a retired American nurse aide who was a pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement. ", She believes that, if her pregnancy had been the only issue, they would have found a way to overcome it. ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. Virgo Civil Rights Leader #2. Martin Luther King Jr., had been seeking to stir the outrage of African Americans and sympathetic whites into civic action. The other three moved, but another black woman, Ruth Hamilton, who was pregnant, got on and sat next to Colvin. 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. 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. Gary Younge investigates, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. "I became very active in her youth group and we use to meet every Sunday afternoon at the Luther church," she says. In 1955, at age 15, Claudette Colvin . "We didn't know what was going to happen, but we knew something would happen. Months before Rosa Parks became the mother of the modern civil rights movement by refusing to move to the back of a segregated Alabama bus, Black teenager Claudette Colvin did the same. Colvin gave birth to Raymond, a son. [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. [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. That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person. She worked there for 35 years until her . Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. 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. Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist of African descent. '", The atmosphere on the bus became very tense. Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. "He asked us both to get up. 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. 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". Two more kicks soon followed. 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. I was afraid they might rape me. Like Colvin, Parks was commuting home and was seated in the "coloured section" of the bus. It is this that incenses Patton. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. 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 . Her first son died in 1993. "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. "She had been tracked down by the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times." ", "I wanted to go north and liberate my people," explains Colvin. Until recently, none of her workmates knew anything of her pioneering role in the civil rights movement. ", They took her to City Hall, where she was charged with misconduct, resisting arrest and violating the city segregation laws. 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. That left Colvin. "[28], On May 20, 2018, Congressman Joe Crowley honored Colvin for her lifetime commitment to public service with a Congressional Certificate and an American flag. That summer she became pregnant by a much older man. [2][10] When Colvin was eight years old, the Colvins moved to King Hill, a poor black neighborhood in Montgomery where she spent the rest of her childhood. Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. [39] Later, Rev. "[38], Colvin's role has not gone completely unrecognized. 45.148.121.138 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 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. ", 'Facts speak only when the historian calls on them," wrote the historian EH Carr in his landmark work, What Is History? [47], A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. Rita Dove penned the poem "Claudette Colvin Goes to Work," which later became a song. 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. "In a few hours, every Negro youngster on the streets discussed Colvin's arrest. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats.". ", Some in Montgomery, particularly in King Hill, think the decision was informed by snobbery. They forced her into the back of a squad car, one officer jumping in after her. As in 2023, Claudette Colvin's age is 83 years. ", Nonetheless, the shock waves of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond. The policeman grabbed her and took her to a patrolman's car in which his colleagues were waiting. Her reputation also made it impossible for her to find a job. Letters of support came from as far afield as Oregon and California. The driver looked at the women in his mirror. 9. "The news travelled fast," wrote Robinson. Born on September 5 #12. "So I told him I was not going to get up either. [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. The bus froze. The majority of customers on the bus system were African American, but they were discriminated against by its custom of segregated seating. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. Colvin never married but gave birth to two sons, the first was Raymond Colvin (b. December 1955, died 1993). In court, Colvin opposed the segregation law by declaring herself not guilty. I was glued to my seat," she later told Newsweek. "I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on. It was a case of 'bourgey' blacks looking down on the working-class blacks. [30] Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. 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. The driver caught a glimpse of them through his mirror. [citation needed]. A memorial service will be held at 11:00 AM, Saturday, March 4, 2023, at East Juliette . This was partially a product of the outward face the NAACP was trying to broadcast and partially a product of the women fearing losing their jobs, which were often in the public school system. "Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' The driver wanted all of them to move to the back and stand so that the white passenger could sit. The full enormity of what she had done was only just beginning to dawn on her. "Never. Claudette Colvin's birth flower is Aster/Myosotis. We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,contact us! Claudette Colvin's birthstone is Sapphire. It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. "Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom.". When the trial was held, Colvin pleaded innocent but was found guilty and released on indefinite probation in her parents' care. She shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated. "I didn't know if they were crazy, if they were going to take me to a Klan meeting. [28] Colvin stated she was branded a troublemaker by many in her community. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. [2] Colvin and her sister referred to the Colvins as their parents and took their last name. He went back to Colvin, now seven months pregnant. 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 didn't want to know me. Born in Alabama #33. Colvin left Montgomery for New York in 1958, because she had difficulty finding and keeping work after the notoriety of the . Colvin has retired from her job and has been living her life. "But when she was found guilty, her agonised sobs penetrated the atmosphere of the courthouse. Members of the community acted as lookouts, while Colvin's father sat up all night with a shotgun, in case the Ku Klux Klan turned up. One month later, the Supreme Court affirmed the order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation. 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. 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