She resisted bus segregation nine months before Rosa Parks, . 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. 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. Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a retired American nurse aide who was a pioneer of the 1950s 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. She was convicted on all charges, appealed and lost again. While this does not happen by conspiracy, it is often facilitated by collusion. I can still vividly hear the click of those keys. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. She worked there for 35 years until her . 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. "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. King's role in the boycott transformed him into a national figure of the civil rights movement, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. It was believed that a venomous snake would die if placed in a vessel made of sapphire. Another cracked a joke about her bra size. asked one. 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. [24] She was convicted on all three charges in juvenile court. As an adult, she worked as a nurse's assistant in New . 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. The United States District Court ruled the state of Alabama and Montgomery's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. "I had almost a life history of being rebellious against being mistreated against my colour," she said. The case went to the United States Supreme Court on appeal by the state, and it upheld the district court's ruling on November 13, 1956. The driver caught a glimpse of them through his mirror. Colvins feisty testimony was instrumental in the shocking success of the suit, which ended segregated seating on Montgomerys buses. 05 September 1939 - Court trial. 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. Colvin gave birth to her first son Raymond Jun 5, 1956. American civil rights pioneer and former nurse's aide Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939. image credit; BBC. Others say it is because she was a foul-mouthed tearaway. Despite the light sentence, Colvin could not escape the court of public opinion. Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. "So did the teachers, too. Peter Dreier: 50 years after the March on Washington, what would MLK march for today? I started protecting my crotch. She retired in 2004. 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. 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. The three black passengers sitting alongside Parks rose reluctantly. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1897c67fea0e3a He went back to Colvin, now seven months pregnant. Reverend Ralph Abernathy, who played a key role as King's right-hand man throughout the civil rights years, referred to her as a "tool" of the movement. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, at the age of 15, for refusing to give up her seat on a crowded, segregated bus to a white woman. Some have tried to change that. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People briefly considered using Colvin's case to challenge the segregation laws, but they decided against it because of her age. "[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. She is a civil rights activist from the 1950s and a retired nurse aide. . Mothers expressed concern about permitting their children on the buses. Most of the people didn't have problems with us sitting on the bus, most New Yorkers cared about economic problems. CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST, 81, BIRMINGHAM, AL. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. In the 2010s, Larkin arranged for a street to be named after Colvin. Two policemen boarded the bus and asked Colvin why she wouldn't give up her seat. [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. [2][13] Not long after, in September 1952, Colvin started attending Booker T. Washington High School. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. It was this dark, clever, angry young woman who boarded the Highland Avenue bus on Friday, March 2, 1955, opposite Martin Luther King's church on Dexter Avenue, Montgomery. The policeman grabbed her and took her to a patrolman's car in which his colleagues were waiting. With funding from church donations and activities organized by the chapter, Colvin had her day in court. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack, aged 37. 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. '", The atmosphere on the bus became very tense. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats.". The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of college. It was going to be a long night on Dixie Drive. It reads: "The wonderful thing which you have just done makes me feel like a craven coward. 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. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) [1] [2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. he asked. 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. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."[6][8]. "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." I didn't get up, because I didn't feel like I was breaking the law. "She had been yelling, 'It's my constitutional right!'. 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. 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. She was detained on March 2, 1955, in . Telephones rang. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. She said, "They've already called it the Rosa Parks museum, so they've already made up their minds what the story is. Rosa Parks was neither a victim nor a saint, but a long-standing political activist and feminist. "If it had been for an old lady, I would have got up, but it wasn't. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. In 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond. Her son Raymond Colvin died of a heart attack in 1993. Parks stayed put. 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.". Like Colvin, Parks refused, and was arrested and fined. Claudette Colvin in 2009. 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. "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. The death news of Colvin, which has been going on the Internet, is untrue; she is alive and is 83. She sat down in the front of the bus and refused to move on her own will when asked. 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. "[37], In 2000, Troy State University opened a Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery to honor the town's place in civil rights history. Tour: Black America and the burden of the perfect victim. Joseph Rembert said, "If nobody did anything for Claudette Colvin in the past why don't we do something for her right now?" [32], In 2005, Colvin told the Montgomery Advertiser that she would not have changed her decision to remain seated on the bus: "I feel very, very proud of what I did," she said. Colvin went to her job instead. She now works as a nurses' aide at an old people's home in downtown Manhattan. [4] Colvin later said: "My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. 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. 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. 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. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." Colvin was a member of the NAACP Youth Council and had been learning about the civil rights movement in school. He was so light-skinned (like his father) that people frequently said she had a baby by a white man. Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. "We didn't know what was going to happen, but we knew something would happen. Austin, but she was raised by her great-aunt and great-uncle, Mary Ann and Q.P. How encouraging it would be if more adults had your courage, self-respect and integrity. ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. 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. [20] In a later interview, she said: "We couldn't try on clothes. Colvin was the first person to be arrested for challenging Montgomery's bus segregation policies, so her story made a few local papers - but nine months later, the same act of defiance by Rosa Parks was reported all over the world. "There was no assault", Price said. Blake persisted. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 23:25. She was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested by the two policemen, Thomas J. Ms. Colvin in New York on Feb. 5, 2009. That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person. The legal case turned on the testimony of four plaintiffs, one of whom was Claudette Colvin. If the bus became so crowded that all the "white seats" in the front of the bus were filled until white people were standing, any African Americans were supposed to get up from nearby seats to make room for whites, move further to the back, and stand in the aisle if there were no free seats in that section. 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