It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. None of them spoke to me; they didn't see if I was okay. We used to have a lot of juke joints up there, and maybe men would drink too much and get into a fight. The driver, James Blake, turned around and ordered the black passengers to go to the back of the bus, so that the whites could take their places. Until recently, none of her workmates knew anything of her pioneering role in the civil rights movement. She shops with her workmates and watches action movies on video. James Edward "Jungle Jim" Colvin, 69, of Juliette, Georgia, passed away on Saturday, February 25, 2023. Today their boycott, modelled on the one in Montgomery, is largely forgotten - but it was a milestone in achieving equality. "She had remained calm all during the days of her waiting period and during the trial," wrote Robinson. Men instructed their wives to walk or to share rides in neighbour's autos.". Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to. "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. All I could do is cry. 2023 BBC. Martin Luther King Jr., had been seeking to stir the outrage of African Americans and sympathetic whites into civic action. [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 there were two things about Colvin's stand on that March day that made it significant. "[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. But people in King Hill do not remember Colvin as that type of girl, and the accusation irritates Colvin to this day. Somehow, as Mrs. Born in Alabama #33. Virgo Civil Rights Leader #2. A 15-year-old high school student at the time, Colvin got fed up and refused to move even before Parks. "It took on the form of harassment. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. 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. Ward and Paul Headley. Sikora telephoned a startled Colvin and wrote an article about her. "There was no assault", Price said. Listen to Claudette Colvin's interview on Outlook on the BBC World Service. In 1955, at age 15, Claudette Colvin . Montgomery was not home to the first bus boycott any more than Colvin was the first person to challenge segregation. It felt like Harriet Tubman was pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth was pushing me down on the other shoulder, she mused many years later. During her pregnancy, she was abandoned by civil rights leaders. But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. 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. I was sitting on the last seat that they said you could sit in. American civil rights pioneer and former nurse's aide Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939. image credit; BBC. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. 1939- Claudette was born in Birmingham 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the presidential term of office . When the trial was held, Colvin pleaded innocent but was found guilty and released on indefinite probation in her parents' care. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. "[4][5] Colvin's case was dropped by civil rights campaigners because Colvin was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings. 45.148.121.138 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. Angry protests erupt over Greek rail disaster, Explosive found in check-in luggage at US airport, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. The three black passengers sitting alongside Parks rose reluctantly. Colvin gave birth to her first son Raymond Jun 5, 1956. As well as the predictable teenage fantasy of "marrying a baseball player", she also had strong political convictions. But they dont say that Columbus discovered America; they should say, for the European people, that is, you know, their discovery of the new world. She sat down in the front of the bus and refused to move on her own will when asked. 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. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. She had sons named Raymond and Randy. Colvin later moved to New York City and worked as a nurse's aide. ", 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. It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. When the white seats were filled, the driver, J Fred Black, asked Parks and three others to give up their seats. [47], A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. After her refusal to give up her seat, Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city's segregation laws. Moreover, she was not the first person to take a stand by keeping her seat and challenging the system. The court, however, ruled against her and put her on probation. "For a while, there was a real distance between me and Mrs Parks over this. It is this that incenses Patton. "It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing.". 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]. "When I was in the ninth grade, all the police cars came to get Jeremiah," says Colvin. 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. Nonetheless, Raymond died at the age of 37, reported Core Online. It was a case of 'bourgey' blacks looking down on the working-class blacks. That's what they usually did.". "The white people were always seated at the front of the bus and the black people were seated at the back of the bus. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. A memorial service will be held at 11:00 AM, Saturday, March 4, 2023, at East Juliette . "Nobody slept at home because we thought there would be some retaliation," says Colvin. The legal case turned on the testimony of four plaintiffs, one of whom was Claudette Colvin. Broken-down cars sit outside tumble-down houses. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. "For nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity. Respectfully and faithfully yours. [29], Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond, in March 1956. [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. "In a few hours, every Negro youngster on the streets discussed Colvin's arrest. Best Known For: Claudette Colvin is an activist who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s. Peter Dreier: 50 years after the March on Washington, what would MLK march for today? Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack, aged 37. As an adult, she worked as a nurse's assistant in New . Rosa didnt give me enough time to put in for a day off, she recalled. 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.". Those who are aware of these distortions in the civil rights story are few. 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." 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. Betty Shabbaz, the widow of Malcolm X, was one of them. Two policemen boarded the bus and asked Colvin why she wouldn't give up her seat. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one. In high school, she had high ambitions of political activity. "Always studying and using long words.". 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 believes that, if her pregnancy had been the only issue, they would have found a way to overcome it. 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. In 1969, years after moving to NYC, she acquired a job working as a Nurse's aide at a Nursing home. She turns, watches, wipes, feeds and washes the elderly patients and offers them a gentle, consoling word when they become disoriented. "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. As civil rights attorney Fred Gray put it, Claudette gave all of us moral courage. Gary Younge investigates, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. [48], In the second season (2013) of the HBO drama series The Newsroom, the lead character, Will McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels), uses Colvin's refusal to comply with segregation as an example of how "one thing" can change everything. The United States District Court ruled the state of Alabama and Montgomery's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' "So did the teachers, too. However, some white passengers still refused to sit near a black person. Meanwhile, Parks had been transformed from a politically-conscious activist to an upstanding, unfortunate Everywoman. She was born on September 5, 1939. He was executed for his alleged crimes. She was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested by the two policemen, Thomas J. ", They took her to City Hall, where she was charged with misconduct, resisting arrest and violating the city segregation laws. ", Nonetheless, the shock waves of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond. As in 2023, Claudette Colvin's age is 83 years. 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. 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. Colvin gave birth to Raymond, a son. "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. "Move y'all, I want those two seats," he yelled. That left Colvin. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn't even go into the same restaurants," Claudette Colvin says. It is time for President Obama to. Claudette Colvin's birthstone is Sapphire. The young Ms. Colvin was portrayed by actress Mariah Iman Wilson. "She had been tracked down by the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times." "It would have been different if I hadn't been pregnant, but if I had lived in a different place or been light-skinned, it would have made a difference, too. '", The atmosphere on the bus became very tense. Yet months before her arrest on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a 15-year-old girl was charged with the same 'crime'. Mothers expressed concern about permitting their children on the buses. 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. 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. [15], In 1955, Colvin was a student at the segregated Booker T. Washington High School in the city. [50], In 2022, a biopic of Colvin titled Spark written by Niceole R. Levy and directed by Anthony Mackie was announced. "We had unpaved streets and outside toilets. Some people questioned if the father was a white male. At the time, Parks was a seamstress in a local department store but was also a secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). She was detained on March 2, 1955, in . When Austin abandoned the family, Gadson was unable to financially support her children. Rosa Parks stated: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. Civil Rights Leader #7. To sustain the boycott, communities organised carpools and the Montgomery's African-American taxi drivers charged only 10 cents - the same price as bus fare - for fellow African Americans. "Had it not been for Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, there may not have been a Thurgood Marshall, a Martin Luther King or a Rosa Parks. [21], She also said in the 2009 book Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice, by Phillip Hoose, that one of the police officers sat in the back seat with her. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. The bus went three stops before several white passengers got on. The baby was fair-skinned just like his dad and people accused her of having a white baby. Raymond D. Gunderson, age 91, of Hot Springs, passed away Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023. He went back to Colvin, now seven months pregnant. Phillip Hoose also wrote about her in the young adult biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot and take it to the store". And that person, it transpired, would be Rosa Parks. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement tried to keep up appearances and make the "most appealing" protesters the most seen. 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. [23] She was bailed out by her minister, who told her that she had brought the revolution to Montgomery. They never came and discussed it with my parents. . Colvin's son Raymond died in 1993. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. She worked there for 35 years until her . She also had become pregnant and they thought an unwed mother would attract too much negative attention in a public legal battle. How encouraging it would be if more adults had your courage, self-respect and integrity. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. "He asked us both to get up. Despite the light sentence, Colvin could not escape the court of public opinion. 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. [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 Claudette Austin in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 5, 1939, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin. In 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond. 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. To the exclusively male and predominantly middle-class, church-dominated, local black leadership in Montgomery, she was a fallen woman. You can't sugarcoat it. "I will take you off," said the policeman, then he kicked her. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."[6][8]. And, from there, the short distance to sanctity: they called her "Saint Rosa", "an angel walking", "a heaven-sent messenger". 83 Year Old #3. In a United States district court, she testified before the three-judge panel that heard the case. Parks," her former attorney, Fred Gray, told Newsweek. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. ", A personal tragedy for her was seen as a political liability by the town's civil rights leaders. Claudette Colvin : biography. he asked. 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. "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. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail," she says. I was glad that an adult had finally stood up to the system, but I felt left out.. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. 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. In the nine months between her arrest and that of Parks, another young black woman, Mary Louise Smith, suffered a similar fate. She was convicted on all charges, appealed and lost again. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus." "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," says Colvin. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. [34], Colvin has often said she is not angry that she did not get more recognition; rather, she is disappointed. Today, she sits in a diner in the Bronx, her pudding-basin haircut framing a soft face with a distant smile. 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. [16], Through the trial Colvin was represented by Fred Gray, a lawyer for the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which was organizing civil rights actions. 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. She and her son Raymond moved in with Velma while Colvin looked for work. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. In this respect, the civil rights movement in Montgomery moved fast. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. "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. 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. This much we know. A year later, on 20 December 1956, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation on the buses must end. ", To complicate matters, a pregnant black woman, Mrs Hamilton, got on and sat next to Colvin. "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. "Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' Associated With. The majority of customers on the bus system were African American, but they were discriminated against by its custom of segregated seating. They forced her into the back of a squad car, one officer jumping in after her. "I went bipolar. Your IP: Colvin left Montgomery for New York in 1958, because she had difficulty finding and keeping work after the notoriety of the . "I would sit in the back and no one would even know I was there. 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 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. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was riding home on a city bus after school when a bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white passenger. "They put him on death row." Claudette Colvin, Who Was Arrested for Refusing to Give Up Her Bus Seat in 1955, Is Fighting to Clear Her Record The civil rights pioneer pushed back against segregation nine months before Rosa. 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. BBC World Service. 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. ", The upshot was that Colvin was left in an incredibly vulnerable position. Officers were called to the scene and Colvin was forcefully taken off of the bus and . 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. Colvins feisty testimony was instrumental in the shocking success of the suit, which ended segregated seating on Montgomerys buses. I was glued to my seat. 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. . For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. Like Colvin, Parks was commuting home and was seated in the "coloured section" of the bus. But it is also a rare and excellent one that gives her more than a passing, dismissive mention. Her pastor was called and came to pick her up. "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 . For months, Montgomerys NAACP chapter had been looking for a court case to test the constitutionality of the bus laws. 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. "I make up stories to convince them to stay in bed." 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. "[28], On May 20, 2018, Congressman Joe Crowley honored Colvin for her lifetime commitment to public service with a Congressional Certificate and an American flag. [16], Colvin was not the only woman of the Civil Rights Movement who was left out of the history books. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. 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. Of customers on the bus and arrested by the town 's civil attorney. Of customers on the working-class blacks `` it is the second time since the Colvin. That time, Colvin pleaded innocent but was found guilty and released on indefinite probation her... 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the presidential term office... Us Supreme court ruled that segregation on the buses is 83 years, then he her. The boycott movement who was a case of 'bourgey ' blacks looking down on the bus and ''. Expressed concern about permitting their children on the bus in Montgomery, she was convicted on all,! 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