She fell out of history altogether. She was fingerprinted, denied a phone call and locked into a cell. 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. 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. Colvin is not exactly bitter. The problem arose because all the seats on the bus were taken. He was so light-skinned (like his father) that people frequently said she had a baby by a white man. [2] She was also a member of the NAACP Youth Council, where she formed a close relationship with her mentor, Rosa Parks. ", If that were not enough, the son, Raymond, to whom she would give birth in December, emerged light-skinned: "He came out looking kind of yellow, and then I was ostracised because I wouldn't say who the father was and they thought it was a white man. "Never. Most Americans, even in Montgomery, have never heard of her. She also had become pregnant and they thought an unwed mother would attract too much negative attention in a public legal battle. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'. Read about our approach to external linking. It is this that incenses Patton. [30] Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. BBC World Service. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. History had me glued to the seat.. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. But people in King Hill do not remember Colvin as that type of girl, and the accusation irritates Colvin to this day. In the nine months between her arrest and that of Parks, another young black woman, Mary Louise Smith, suffered a similar fate. The legal case turned on the testimony of four plaintiffs, one of whom was Claudette Colvin. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats.". In 1969, years after moving to NYC, she acquired a job working as a Nurse's aide at a Nursing home. . 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. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. After her arrest and late appearance in the court hearing, she was more or less forgotten. "Oh God," wailed one black woman at the back. [27], In New York, Colvin and her son Raymond initially lived with her older sister, Velma Colvin. Colvin took her seat near the emergency door next to one black girl; two others sat across the aisle from her. 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 thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. She dreamed of becoming the President of the United States. Some people questioned if the father was a white male. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman.'" For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. 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. In this respect, the civil rights movement in Montgomery moved fast. When Austin abandoned the family, Gadson was unable to financially support her children. '", The atmosphere on the bus became very tense. When the white seats were filled, the driver, J Fred Black, asked Parks and three others to give up their seats. "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. Sikora telephoned a startled Colvin and wrote an article about her. "They put him on death row." 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. [30], Colvin was a predecessor to the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 1955, which gained national attention. Claudette Colvin and her guardians relocated to Montgomery when . [29], Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond, in March 1956. [37], "All we want is the truth, why does history fail to get it right?" "I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on. 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. But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. Colvin was not invited officially for the formal dedication of the museum, which opened to the public in September 2016. The baby was fair-skinned just like his dad and people accused her of having a white baby. 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. "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," Colvin later said. I was glued to my seat," she later told Newsweek. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. She was 15. But there were two things about Colvin's stand on that March day that made it significant. [2][14] Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement tried to keep up appearances and make the "most appealing" protesters the most seen. "For a while, there was a real distance between me and Mrs Parks over this. They felt she had the maturity to handle being at the center of potential controversy. She has literally become a footnote in history. - Claudette Colvin On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Montgomery was not home to the first bus boycott any more than Colvin was the first person to challenge segregation. ", A personal tragedy for her was seen as a political liability by the town's civil rights leaders. She worked there for 35 years until her . "Nobody slept at home because we thought there would be some retaliation," says Colvin. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. 05 September 1939 - Court trial. He wasn't." "So did the teachers, too. "It bothered some that there was an unruly, tomboy quality to Colvin, including a propensity for curse words and immature outbursts," writes Douglas Brinkly, who recently completed a biography of Parks. Like Colvin, Parks refused, and was arrested and fined. Phillip Hoose also wrote about her in the young adult biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. 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. Colvin left Montgomery for New York in 1958, because she had difficulty finding and keeping work after the notoriety of the . Tour: Black America and the burden of the perfect victim. "There was segregation everywhere. I was afraid they might rape me. Born in Alabama #33. She resisted bus segregation nine months before Rosa Parks, . Her timing was superb. 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. So, Colvin and her younger sister, Delphine, were taken in by their great aunt and uncle, Mary Anne and Q. P. Colvin whose daughter, Velma Colvin, had already moved out. Ms. Colvin in New York on Feb. 5, 2009. "I would sit in the back and no one would even know I was there. She was convicted on all charges, appealed and lost again. "So I told him I was not going to get up, either. [15], In 1955, Colvin was a student at the segregated Booker T. Washington High School in the city. "They did think I was nutty and crazy.". In court, Colvin opposed the segregation law by declaring herself not guilty. March 2 was named Claudette Colvin Day in Montgomery. Peter Dreier: 50 years after the March on Washington, what would MLK march for today? 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. One incident in particular preoccupied her at the time - the plight of her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves. "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. Gary Younge investigates, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. ", When the boycott was over and the African-American community had emerged victorious, King, Nixon and Parks appeared for the cameras. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her . Colvin says that after Supreme Court made its decision, things slowly began to change. Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. I think that history only has room enough for certainyou know, how many icons can you choose? In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming . Although some of the details might seem familiar, this is not the Rosa Parks story. But it is also a rare and excellent one that gives her more than a passing, dismissive mention. Before the Rosa Parks incident took place, Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging the bus segregation system. But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. [23] She was bailed out by her minister, who told her that she had brought the revolution to Montgomery. Listen to Claudette Colvin's interview on Outlook on the BBC World Service. ", Some in Montgomery, particularly in King Hill, think the decision was informed by snobbery. But while the driver went to get a policeman, it was the white students who started to make noise. She withdrew from college, and struggled in the local environment. Broken-down cars sit outside tumble-down houses. 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. 2023 BBC. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one. This occurred nine months before the more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.[3]. The September 5, 1939, birthdate of Claudette Colvin makes her a key player in the 1950s American civil rights movement. Phillip Hoose. Nor was Colvin the last to be passed over. "They lectured us about Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and we were taught about an opera singer called Marian Anderson who wasn't allowed to sing at Constitutional Hall just because she was black, so she sang at Lincoln Memorial instead.". The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. 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. 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. ", "I wanted to go north and liberate my people," explains Colvin. Unable to find work in Montgomery, Colvin moved to New York in 1958, while her son Raymond remained behind with family. Her voice is soft and high, almost shrill. Until recently, none of her workmates knew anything of her pioneering role in the civil rights movement. She worked there for 35 years, retiring in 2004. Her rhythm is simple and lifestyle frugal. "In a few hours, every Negro youngster on the streets discussed Colvin's arrest. Colvin left Montgomery for New York City in 1958,[6] because she had difficulty finding and keeping work following her participation in the federal court case that overturned bus segregation. Going to a segregated school had one advantage, she found - her teachers gave her a good grounding in black history. In 1955, at age 15, Claudette Colvin . Anything to detach herself from the horror of reality. The driver kept on going but stopped when he reached a junction where a police squad car was waiting. She had sons named Raymond and Randy. Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. Born on September 5, 1939, Claudette Colvin hails from Alabama, United States. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack at age 37. he asked. "For nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity. "[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. Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. ", Everyone, including Colvin, agreed that it was news of her pregnancy that ultimately persuaded the local black hierarchy to abandon her as a cause clbre. ", Nonetheless, the shock waves of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond. The young Ms. Colvin was portrayed by actress Mariah Iman Wilson. She concentrated her mind on things she had been learning at school. "We walked downtown and my friends and I saw the bus and decided to get on, it was right across the road from Dr Martin Luther King's church," Colvin says. Sapphire was once thought to guard against evil and poisoning. Colvin's sister, Gloria Laster, said. [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. 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. We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,contact us! First, it came less than a year after the US supreme court had outlawed the "separate but equal" policy that had provided the legal basis for racial segregation - what had been custom and practice in the South for generations was now against federal law and could be challenged in the courts. After decades of estrangement, Parks once telephoned Colvin in the late 1980s and invited her to hear Parks speak at a community college. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed the District Court decision on November 13, 1956. "The white people were always seated at the front of the bus and the black people were seated at the back of the bus. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. I was thinking, Hey, I did that months ago, Colvin recalled. When the trial was held, Colvin pleaded innocent but was found guilty and released on indefinite probation in her parents' care. Betty Shabbaz, the widow of Malcolm X, was one of them. She prayed furiously as they sped out, with the cop leering over her, guessing at her bra size. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. The driver wanted all of them to move to the back and stand so that the white passenger could sit. Colvin gave birth to her first son Raymond Jun 5, 1956. 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. Others say it is because she was a foul-mouthed tearaway. And, from there, the short distance to sanctity: they called her "Saint Rosa", "an angel walking", "a heaven-sent messenger". "I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on. My mother knew I was disappointed with the system and all the injustice we were receiving and she said to me: 'Well, Claudette, you finally did it.'". In New York, Colvin gave birth to another son, Randy. However, her story is often silenced. "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats," he said. All but housebound, mocked at school and dropped, as she put it, by Montgomerys black leadership, Colvin saw her self-confidence plummet. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. 45.148.121.138 Claudette Colvin's birthstone is Sapphire. Just as her case was beginning to catch the nation's imagination, she became pregnant. I was glued to my seat. [39] Later, Rev. After her refusal to give up her seat, Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city's segregation laws. In this small, elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches and watch an impoverished world go by. Claudette Colvin's birth flower is Aster/Myosotis. But, as she recalls her teenage years after the arrest and the pregnancy, she hovers between resentment, sadness and bewilderment at the way she was treated. 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. 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. [citation needed]. "I wasn't frightened but disappointed and angry because I knew I was sitting in the right seat.". 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. 10. "I make up stories to convince them to stay in bed." I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' She became quiet and withdrawn. ", 'Facts speak only when the historian calls on them," wrote the historian EH Carr in his landmark work, What Is History? But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. She retired in 2004. Claudette Colvin : biography. "When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. 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. 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 wasn't a bad area, but it had a reputation." All I could do is cry. The three black passengers sitting alongside Parks rose reluctantly. Some have tried to change that. The civil rights pioneer, 82, had her name cleared after an Alabama family court judge granted Colvin's petition to expunge her record last month, her family said in a statement released. "The light-skinned girls always thought they were better looking," says Colvin. 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. Two years earlier, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, African-Americans launched an effective bus boycott after drivers refused to honour an integrated seating policy, which was settled in an unsatisfactory fudge. "You got to get up," they shouted. "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. 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. A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner. Most of the people didn't have problems with us sitting on the bus, most New Yorkers cared about economic problems. [2] Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. Velma Colvin stopped when he reached a junction where a police squad car was waiting for many more icons tearaway. On September 5, 2009 history fail to get up, I did was a foul-mouthed tearaway for many,... Heart attack spark and it caught raymond colvin son of claudette colvin on Washington, what would MLK March for today ] Price testified Colvin! 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