King Hill, Montgomery, is the sepia South. 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. ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. Roy White, who was in charge of most of the project, asked Colvin if she would like to appear in a video to tell her story, but Colvin refused. "[33] "I'm not disappointed. "I remember during Easter one year, I was to get a pair of black patent shoes but you could only get them from the white stores, so my mother drew the outline of my feet on a brown paper bag in order to get the closest size, because we weren't allowed to go in the store to try them on.". For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. [50], In 2022, a biopic of Colvin titled Spark written by Niceole R. Levy and directed by Anthony Mackie was announced. 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. Claudette Colvin in 2009. Tour: Black America and the burden of the perfect victim. [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. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. [2] Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. ", When the boycott was over and the African-American community had emerged victorious, King, Nixon and Parks appeared for the cameras. "There was no assault", Price said. The legal case turned on the testimony of four plaintiffs, one of whom was Claudette Colvin. For we like our history neat - an easy-to-follow, self-contained narrative with dates, characters and landmarks with which we can weave together otherwise unrelated events into one apparently seamless length of fabric held together by sequence and consequence. "Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom.". 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. She earned mostly As in her classes and aspired to become president one day. "[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. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. 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. "It is he who decides which facts to give the floor and in what order or context. Others say it is because she was a foul-mouthed tearaway. Her timing was superb. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. Betty Shabbaz, the widow of Malcolm X, was one of them. In court, Colvin opposed the segregation law by declaring herself not guilty. How encouraging it would be if more adults had your courage, self-respect and integrity. [citation needed]. ", Almost 50 years on, Colvin still talks about the incident with a mixture of shock and indignation - as though she still cannot believe that this could have happened to her. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. 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. 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. She has literally become a footnote in history. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. [49], The Little-Known Heroes: Claudette Colvin, a children's picture book by Kaushay and Spencer Ford, was published in 2021. That summer she became pregnant by a much older man. She prayed furiously as they sped out, with the cop leering over her, guessing at her bra size. And, like the pregnant Mrs Hamilton, many African-Americans refused to tolerate the indignity of the South's racist laws in silence. (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press). 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.". And that person, it transpired, would be Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks stated: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. "I didn't know if they were crazy, if they were going to take me to a Klan meeting. 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. ", "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day," said Rosa Parks. 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. ", To complicate matters, a pregnant black woman, Mrs Hamilton, got on and sat next to Colvin. [2][13] Not long after, in September 1952, Colvin started attending Booker T. Washington High School. Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. Though he didn't say it, nobody was going to say that about the then heavily pregnant Colvin. "You may do that," said Parks, who is now 87 and lives in Detroit. "She was not the first person to be arrested for violation of the bus seating ordinance," said J Mills Thornton, an author and academic. He was . Click to reveal Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to. She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move. Claudette Colvin became a teenage mother in 1956 when she gave birth to a boy named Raymond. "We learned about negro spirituals and recited poems but my social studies teachers went into more detail," she says. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus." [36], Colvin and her family have been fighting for recognition for her action. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. Civil Rights Leader #7. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. I was thinking, Hey, I did that months ago, Colvin recalled. 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. Claudette had two sons named Raymond and Randy Colvin, and her first pregnancy was at the age of 16 with a much older man. Parks," her former attorney, Fred Gray, told Newsweek. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Some people questioned if the father was a white male. [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. People often make death hoaxes of well-known personalities to get public attention and views. 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). "They put him on death row." Blake approached her. The young Ms. Colvin was portrayed by actress Mariah Iman Wilson. ", Not so Colvin. 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. Colvin was not invited officially for the formal dedication of the museum, which opened to the public in September 2016. "He asked us both to get up. 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. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. She needed support. It reads: "The wonderful thing which you have just done makes me feel like a craven coward. 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. 45.148.121.138 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. As well as the predictable teenage fantasy of "marrying a baseball player", she also had strong political convictions. [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. The bus froze. The full enormity of what she had done was only just beginning to dawn on her. The case, organized and filed in federal court by civil rights attorney Fred Gray, challenged city bus segregation in Montgomery as unconstitutional. [28] Colvin stated she was branded a troublemaker by many in her community. "I wasn't frightened but disappointed and angry because I knew I was sitting in the right seat.". 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. A year later, on 20 December 1956, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation on the buses must end. Rosa Parks was neither a victim nor a saint, but a long-standing political activist and feminist. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. American civil rights pioneer and former nurse's aide Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939. image credit; BBC. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 23:25. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. The three black passengers sitting alongside Parks rose reluctantly. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). 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. King's role in the boycott transformed him into a national figure of the civil rights movement, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman. I was glued to my seat. However, not one has bothered to interview her. BBC World Service. After her minister paid her bail, she went home where she and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation. It is time for President Obama to. One white woman defended Colvin to the police; another said that, if she got away with this, "they will take over". None of them spoke to me; they didn't see if I was okay. They remember her as a confident, studious, young girl with a streak that was rebellious without being boisterous. I think that history only has room enough for certainyou know, how many icons can you choose? I was glad that an adult had finally stood up to the system, but I felt left out.. Taylor Branch. You can't sugarcoat it. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. "But according to [the commissioner], she was the first person ever to enter a plea of not guilty to such a charge.". "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. Somehow, as Mrs. I started protecting my crotch. In the 2010s, Larkin arranged for a street to be named after Colvin. But people in King Hill do not remember Colvin as that type of girl, and the accusation irritates Colvin to this day. Reeves was a teenage grocery delivery boy who was found having sex with a white woman. '", The atmosphere on the bus became very tense. [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. "I respect my elders, but I don't respect what they did to Colvin," she says. But go to King Hill and mention her name, and the first thing they will tell you is that she was the first. In this lesson, students will learn about Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old who stood up for equal rights in 1955. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. Charged with disturbing the peace, breaking the bus segregation laws and assaulting the officers who had apprehended her, she was released later that night. 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. "She was a bookworm," says Gloria Hardin, who went to school with Colvin and who still lives in King Hill. Colvin was a member of the NAACP Youth Council and had been learning about the civil rights movement in school. 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