"If any of you are not gentlemen enough to give a lady a seat, you should be put in jail yourself," he said. 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. But somewhere en route they mislaid the truth. Letters of support came from as far afield as Oregon and California. "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. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. However, her story is often silenced. 9. Sapphire was once thought to guard against evil and poisoning. Mothers expressed concern about permitting their children on the buses. The problem arose because all the seats on the bus were taken. "I will take you off," said the policeman, then he kicked her. 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. She appreciated, but never embraced, King's strategy of nonviolent resistance, remains a keen supporter of Malcolm X and was constantly frustrated by sexism in the movement. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. Those who are aware of these distortions in the civil rights story are few. asked one. 10. "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. [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. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack at age 37. People often make death hoaxes of well-known personalities to get public attention and views. Colvin's son Raymond died in 1993. He went back to Colvin, now seven months pregnant. "You got to get up," they shouted. Her first son died in 1993. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Now 76 and retired, Colvin deserves her place in history. All I could do is cry. 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. They had threatened to throw her out of the Booker T Washington school for wearing her hair in plaits. Colvin was a kid. Parks," her former attorney, Fred Gray, told Newsweek. "She lived in a little shack. [50], In 2022, a biopic of Colvin titled Spark written by Niceole R. Levy and directed by Anthony Mackie was announced. In 1969, years after moving to NYC, she acquired a job working as a Nurse's aide at a Nursing home. She still has one - a handwritten note from William Harris in Sacramento. Read about our approach to external linking. Like Colvin, Parks refused, and was arrested and fined. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed the District Court decision on November 13, 1956. However, not one has bothered to interview her. "We just sat there and waited for it all to happen," says Gloria Hardin, who was on the bus, too. It was not your tired feet, but your strength of character and resolve that inspired us." 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. Parks's arrest sparked a chain reaction that started the bus boycott that launched the civil rights movement that transformed the apartheid of America's southern states from a local idiosyncrasy to an international scandal. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus." She was 15. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. Montgomery was not home to the first bus boycott any more than Colvin was the first person to challenge segregation. In the nine months between her arrest and that of Parks, another young black woman, Mary Louise Smith, suffered a similar fate. Colvin says that after Supreme Court made its decision, things slowly began to change. "She had been yelling, 'It's my constitutional right!'. [11][12], Two days before Colvin's 13th birthday, Delphine died of polio. "Aren't you going to get up?" The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn't even go into the same restaurants," Claudette Colvin says. State and local officials appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. "When I was in the ninth grade, all the police cars came to get Jeremiah," says Colvin. 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. Her son, Raymond, was born in March 1956. It was believed that a venomous snake would die if placed in a vessel made of sapphire. 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. [30], Colvin was a predecessor to the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 1955, which gained national attention. If one white person wanted to sit down there, then all the black people on that row were supposed to get up and either stand or move further to the back. Blake persisted. History had me glued to the seat.. Officers were called to the scene and Colvin was forcefully taken off of the bus and . 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. Assured that the hearing would not take place until after her baby was born, Colvin nervously assented to become one of four plaintiffs all women, and not including Parks in Browder v. Gayle. 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." Just as her case was beginning to catch the nation's imagination, she became pregnant. Rosa didnt give me enough time to put in for a day off, she recalled. I was glued to my seat," she later told Newsweek. It wasn't a bad area, but it had a reputation." 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.. Telephones rang. Most Popular #5576. "I would sit in the back and no one would even know I was there. "Oh God," wailed one black woman at the back. As an adult, she worked as a nurse's assistant in New . BBC World Service. Her timing was superb. Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history? Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist who, before .css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}Rosa Parks, refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. "Well, I'm going to have you arrested," he replied. [16][19], When Colvin refused to get up, she was thinking about a school paper she had written that day about the local customs that prohibited blacks from using the dressing rooms in order to try on clothes in department stores. 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. 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. Unable to find work in Montgomery, Colvin moved to New York in 1958, while her son Raymond remained behind with family. [17][18][6] This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. He was so light-skinned (like his father) that people frequently said she had a baby by a white man. Today, she sits in a diner in the Bronx, her pudding-basin haircut framing a soft face with a distant smile. In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming majority of leaders. Rosa Parks stated: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. Colvin left Montgomery for New York in 1958, because she had difficulty finding and keeping work after the notoriety of the . Taylor Branch. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. She retired in 2004. 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. Yet months before her arrest on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a 15-year-old girl was charged with the same 'crime'. March 2 was named Claudette Colvin Day in Montgomery. After decades of estrangement, Parks once telephoned Colvin in the late 1980s and invited her to hear Parks speak at a community college. "Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom.". 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. All Rights Reserved. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. The three other girls got up; Colvin stayed put. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. [29], Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond, in March 1956. After her arrest and late appearance in the court hearing, she was more or less forgotten. Everybody knew. The bus froze. 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. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."[6][8]. I think that history only has room enough for certainyou know, how many icons can you choose? Two police officers arrived and pulled her from her seat. It was a journey not only into history but also mythology. Born on September 5 #12. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats.". 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. While Parks has been heralded as a civil rights heroine, Colvin's story has received little notice. asked the policeman. Listen to Claudette Colvin's interview on Outlook on the BBC World Service. They remember her as a confident, studious, young girl with a streak that was rebellious without being boisterous. "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 works the night shift and sleeps "when the sleep falls on her" during the day. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. ", They took her to City Hall, where she was charged with misconduct, resisting arrest and violating the city segregation laws. Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. She herself didn't talk about it much, but she spoke recently to the BBC. In 2009, the writer Phillip Hoose published a book that told her story in detail for the first time. 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. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. [4][18] Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. 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. They never came and discussed it with my parents. "For nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity. Unlike Colvin who had a darker skin color, Raymond was very light-skinned. "She was not the first person to be arrested for violation of the bus seating ordinance," said J Mills Thornton, an author and academic. [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. But attorney Gray found it all but impossible to find riders who would potentially risk their lives by attaching their names as plaintiffs. ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. She shops with her workmates and watches action movies on video. "There was no assault", Price said. I started protecting my crotch. "We had unpaved streets and outside toilets. At 82, her arrest is expunged", "Claudette Colvin's juvenile record has been expunged, 66 years after she was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a White person", "John McCutcheon sings Rita Dove's 'Claudette Colvin', Drunk History' Montgomery, AL (TV Episode 2014), "The Newsroom - Will McAvoy On Historical Hypotheticals", "Report: Biopic about civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin in the works", The Other Rosa Parks (Colvin interview with, Vanessa de la Torre, "In The Shadow of Rosa Parks: 'Unsung Hero' of Civil Rights Movement Speaks Out", "An asterisk, not a star, of black history", Let us Look at Jim Crow for the Criminal he is - Rosa Parks' bus stand and the long history of bus resistance, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Claudette_Colvin&oldid=1142354716. 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. Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist of African descent. "In a few hours, every Negro youngster on the streets discussed Colvin's arrest. 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. Rembert said, "I know people have heard her name before, but I just thought we should have a day to celebrate her." It was March 2, 1955 and fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was taking the bus in order to get home after her day of attending classes. As in 2023, Claudette Colvin's age is 83 years. 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. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) [1] [2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. I can still vividly hear the click of those keys. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. "He asked us both to get up. 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. 83 Year Old #3. She has literally become a footnote in history. They just didn't want to know me. 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. I was glad that an adult had finally stood up to the system, but I felt left out.. Meanwhile, Parks had been transformed from a politically-conscious activist to an upstanding, unfortunate Everywoman. This made her very scared that they would sexually assault her because this happened frequently. 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. . Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. Tour: Black America and the burden of the perfect victim. 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. [39], In 2019, a statue of Rosa Parks was unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama, and four granite markers were also unveiled near the statue on the same day to honor four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, including Colvin[40][41][42], In 2021 Colvin applied to the family court in Montgomery County, Alabama to have her juvenile record expunged. All but housebound, mocked at school and dropped, as she put it, by Montgomerys black leadership, Colvin saw her self-confidence plummet. [34], Colvin has often said she is not angry that she did not get more recognition; rather, she is disappointed. One month later, the Supreme Court declined to reconsider, and on December 20, 1956, the court ordered Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation permanently. Her son Raymond Colvin died of a heart attack in 1993. Born in Alabama #33. A memorial service will be held at 11:00 AM, Saturday, March 4, 2023, at East Juliette . [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. But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. Claudette Colvin was the first person arrested by the police in Montgomery, AL for refusing to give up her bus seat. One month later, the Supreme Court affirmed the order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation. Colvin could not attend the proclamation due to health concerns. 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). ", "I wanted to go north and liberate my people," explains Colvin. 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. 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. She was fingerprinted, denied a phone call and locked into a cell. Her reputation also made it impossible for her to find a job. "They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance. When the white seats were filled, the driver, J Fred Black, asked Parks and three others to give up their seats. "I never swore when I was young," she says. Claudette Colvin, 81, was a true pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement. [2][14] Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. It was a case of 'bourgey' blacks looking down on the working-class blacks. 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. It is here, at 658 Dixie Drive, that Colvin, 61, was raised by a great aunt, who was a maid, and great uncle, who was a "yard boy", whom she grew up calling her parents. 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 . Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. "She gave me the feeling that I was the Moses that God had sent to Pharaoh," said Fred Gray, the lawyer who went on to represent her. "They just dropped me. One incident in particular preoccupied her at the time - the plight of her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves. Most Americans, even in Montgomery, have never heard of her. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. 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. "The news travelled fast," wrote Robinson. [2] Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. The law at the time designated seats for black passengers at the back and for whites at the front, but left the middle as a murky no man's land. Phillip Hoose also wrote about her in the young adult biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. "If it had been for an old lady, I would have got up, but it wasn't. 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. Others say it is because she was a foul-mouthed tearaway. She was born on September 5, 1939. Jeanetta Reese later resigned from the case. [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. 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