Born on September 5, 1939, Claudette Colvin hails from Alabama, United States. Either way, he had violated the South's deeply ingrained taboo on interracial sex - Alabama only voted to legalise interracial marriage last month (the state held a referendum at the same time as the ballot for the US presidency), and then only by a 60-40 majority. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' ", Some in Montgomery, particularly in King Hill, think the decision was informed by snobbery. 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". Reeves was a teenage grocery delivery boy who was found having sex with a white woman. Colvin went to her job instead. Colvin and her friends were sitting in a row a little more than half way down the bus - two were on the right side of the bus and two on the left - and a white passenger was standing in the aisle between them. Until recently, none of her workmates knew anything of her pioneering role in the civil rights movement. Gary Younge investigates, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. [16] On March 2, 1955, she was returning home from school. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot and take it to the store". 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. "[37], In 2000, Troy State University opened a Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery to honor the town's place in civil rights history. 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. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parks.. "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." "I had almost a life history of being rebellious against being mistreated against my colour," she said. They forced her into the back of a squad car, one officer jumping in after her. And, like Parks, the local black establishment started to rally support nationwide for her cause. 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. Others say it is because she was a foul-mouthed tearaway. 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. He contacted Montgomery Councilmen Charles Jinright and Tracy Larkin, and in 2017, the Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. 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. 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. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." "It is he who decides which facts to give the floor and in what order or context. So, you know, I think you compare history, likemost historians say Columbus discovered America, and it was already populated. By Monday, the day the boycott began, Colvin had already been airbrushed from the official version of events. 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. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. Broken-down cars sit outside tumble-down houses. [50], In 2022, a biopic of Colvin titled Spark written by Niceole R. Levy and directed by Anthony Mackie was announced. But somewhere en route they mislaid the truth. I was crying," she says. After training, she landed a job as a nurses aide in a Catholic hospital in Manhattan. Parks was, too. 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. 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. 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. Although some of the details might seem familiar, this is not the Rosa Parks story. . The policeman grabbed her and took her to a patrolman's car in which his colleagues were waiting. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. Rosa didnt give me enough time to put in for a day off, she recalled. Her voice is soft and high, almost shrill. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. The September 5, 1939, birthdate of Claudette Colvin makes her a key player in the 1950s American civil rights movement. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. [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. Phillip Hoose. [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. Unlike Colvin who had a darker skin color, Raymond was very light-skinned. "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. Rosa Parks was neither a victim nor a saint, but a long-standing political activist and feminist. He was drug-addicted and alcoholic and passed away of a cardiac attack in Colvin's apartment. They remember her as a confident, studious, young girl with a streak that was rebellious without being boisterous. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus." Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. She had sons named Raymond and Randy. "She was a bookworm," says Gloria Hardin, who went to school with Colvin and who still lives in King Hill. Her political inclination was fueled in part by an incident with her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves; his case was the first time that she had witnessed the work of the NAACP. "She had been yelling, 'It's my constitutional right!'. "She had been tracked down by the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times." The urban bustle surrounding her could not seem further away from King Hill. That's what they usually did.". It was a journey not only into history but also mythology. I started protecting my crotch. I felt the hand of Harriet Tubman pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth pushing down on the other. Telephones rang. The other three moved, but another black woman, Ruth Hamilton, who was pregnant, got on and sat next to Colvin. In this small, elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches and watch an impoverished world go by. But while the driver went to get a policeman, it was the white students who started to make noise. 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. For several hours, she sat in jail, completely terrified. [2][14] Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. In 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks' famous act of defiance, Claudette Colvin, a Black high school student in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat on a public . In 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond. 9. 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." She said she felt as if she was "getting [her] Christmas in January rather than the 25th. In 1955, when she was 15, she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white womannine months before Rosa Parks's refusal in Montgomery sparked a bus boycott. [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. "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. [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". So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman. She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. She earned mostly As in her classes and aspired to become president one day. Four years later, they executed him. "When I was in the ninth grade, all the police cars came to get Jeremiah," says Colvin. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. Ms. Colvin in New York on Feb. 5, 2009. "Well, I'm going to have you arrested," he replied. [39] Later, Rev. In 2009, the writer Phillip Hoose published a book that told her story in detail for the first time. Just as her case was beginning to catch the nation's imagination, she became pregnant. 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. In court, Colvin opposed the segregation law by declaring herself not guilty. 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. 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. Mothers expressed concern about permitting their children on the buses. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. Funeral Services will be held Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. at the Ft. Deposit Municipal Complex with Pastor. "So I told him I was not going to get up either. Claudette Colvin is an activist who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."[6][8]. "She had remained calm all during the days of her waiting period and during the trial," wrote Robinson. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. Colvin was a kid. [23] She was bailed out by her minister, who told her that she had brought the revolution to Montgomery. That summer she became pregnant by a much older man. However, not one has bothered to interview her. Colvin says that after Supreme Court made its decision, things slowly began to change. She says she expected some abuse from the driver, but nothing more. She fell out of history altogether. [47], A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. Born in Alabama #33. They had threatened to throw her out of the Booker T Washington school for wearing her hair in plaits. However, some white passengers still refused to sit near a black person. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. Before the Rosa Parks incident took place, Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging the bus segregation system. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. "In a few hours, every Negro youngster on the streets discussed Colvin's arrest. Some have tried to change that. CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST, 81, BIRMINGHAM, AL. Claudette Colvin and her guardians relocated to Montgomery when . [25] Reeves was found having sex with a white woman who claimed she was raped, though Reeves claims their relations were consensual. "What's going on with these niggers?" The driver wanted all of them to move to the back and stand so that the white passenger could sit. 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 . [2][13] Not long after, in September 1952, Colvin started attending Booker T. Washington High School. 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. She worked there for 35 years until 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. 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. Then, they will reflect on a time when they took a stand on an important issue. Phillip Hoose is author of Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice., On March2, 1955, a young African American woman boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., took her seat and, minutes later, refused the drivers command to surrender it to a white passenger. 10. In 1955, at age 15, Claudette Colvin . "They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance. She was convicted on all charges, appealed and lost again. He was executed for his alleged crimes. In 1969, years after moving to NYC, she acquired a job working as a Nurse's aide at a Nursing home. 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 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. ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. Two policemen boarded the bus and asked Colvin why she wouldn't give up her seat. He could not bring himself to chide Mrs Hamilton in her condition, but he could not allow her to stay where she was and flout the law as he understood it, either. But also let them know that the attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation. James Edward "Jungle Jim" Colvin, 69, of Juliette, Georgia, passed away on Saturday, February 25, 2023. In the nine months between her arrest and that of Parks, another young black woman, Mary Louise Smith, suffered a similar fate. The case, organized and filed in federal court by civil rights attorney Fred Gray, challenged city bus segregation in Montgomery as unconstitutional. Complexity, with all its nuances and shaded realities, is a messy business. ", But even as she inspired awe throughout the country, elders within Montgomery's black community began to doubt her suitability as a standard-bearer of the movement. During her pregnancy, she was abandoned by civil rights leaders. [citation needed]. 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. 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. By then I didnt have much time for celebrating anyway. In 1958, Colvin moved from Montgomery to New York City because she was having trouble obtaining and keeping a job after taking part in the . 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. A 15-year-old high school student at the time, Colvin got fed up and refused to move even before Parks. Today, she sits in a diner in the Bronx, her pudding-basin haircut framing a soft face with a distant smile. She is a civil rights activist from the 1950s and a retired nurse aide. "You may do that," said Parks, who is now 87 and lives in Detroit. But, unlike Parks, Colvin never made it into the civil rights hall of fame. 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. But there were two things about Colvin's stand on that March day that made it significant. The three other girls got up; Colvin stayed put. The bus froze. [9] When they took Claudette in, the Colvins lived in Pine Level, a small country town in Montgomery County, the same town where Rosa Parks grew up. Claudette Colvin was the first person arrested by the police in Montgomery, AL for refusing to give up her bus seat. Blake approached her. 1939- Claudette was born in Birmingham 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the presidential term of office . Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). History had me glued to the seat.. He went back to Colvin, now seven months pregnant. The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of college. Respectfully and faithfully yours. "I went bipolar. Colvin gave birth to her first son Raymond Jun 5, 1956. [26], Together with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanetta Reese, Colvin was one of the five plaintiffs in the court case of Browder v. Gayle. Her first son died in 1993. "We learned about negro spirituals and recited poems but my social studies teachers went into more detail," she says. "I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on. 2023 BBC. King's role in the boycott transformed him into a national figure of the civil rights movement, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. I knew what was happening, but I just kept trying to shut it out.". At the time, black leaders, including the Rev. 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.". In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming . Jeanetta Reese later resigned from the case. Colvin never married but gave birth to two sons, the first was Raymond Colvin (b. December 1955, died 1993). Claudette Colvin : biography. They would have come and seen my parents and found me someone to marry. "[33] "I'm not disappointed. "But according to [the commissioner], she was the first person ever to enter a plea of not guilty to such a charge.". The court declared her a ward of the state and remanded her to the custody of her family. 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. Rosa Parks stated: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. Officers were called to the scene and Colvin was forcefully taken off of the bus and . "If it had been for an old lady, I would have got up, but it wasn't. "[4][5] Colvin's case was dropped by civil rights campaigners because Colvin was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. She spent the next decade going back and forth like a yo-yo between the two cities, she said. I was glued to my seat. Colvin has remained unmarried all her life. When Colvin's case was appealed to the Montgomery Circuit Court on May 6, 1955, the charges of disturbing the peace and violating the segregation laws were dropped, although her conviction for assaulting a police officer was upheld. 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. [30] Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'. For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. '", The atmosphere on the bus became very tense. For Colvin, the entire episode was traumatic: "Nowadays, you'd call it statutory rape, but back then it was just the kind of thing that happened," she says, describing the conditions under which she conceived. NPR's Margot Adler has said that black organizations believed that Rosa Parks would be a better figure for a test case for integration because she was an adult, had a job, and had a middle-class appearance. 05 September 1939 - Court trial. In New York, Colvin gave birth to another son, Randy. [4][18] Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. Most Popular #5576. [37], "All we want is the truth, why does history fail to get it right?" Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. First Name Claudette #1. She was detained on March 2, 1955, in . Fifty years have passed since campaigners overturned a ban on ethnic minorities working on buses in one British city. The Montgomery bus boycott was then called off after a few months. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. "He asked us both to get up. Another factor was that before long Colvin became pregnant. 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. She now works as a nurses' aide at an old people's home in downtown Manhattan. Colvin took her seat near the emergency door next to one black girl; two others sat across the aisle from her. 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. 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. Somehow, as Mrs. [11][12], Two days before Colvin's 13th birthday, Delphine died of polio. Black people were allowed to occupy those seats so long as white people didn't need them. 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. "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. Their grandmothers heroism didnt give me enough time to put in for a day off, she detained... 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