Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. 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. [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. Those who are aware of these distortions in the civil rights story are few. [2] Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. "We learned about negro spirituals and recited poems but my social studies teachers went into more detail," she says. They never came and discussed it with my parents. 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. Sapphire was once thought to guard against evil and poisoning. Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist of African descent. I didn't want to discuss it with them," she says. Another factor was that before long Colvin became pregnant. Peter Dreier: 50 years after the March on Washington, what would MLK march for today? Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. 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. Colvin was a member of the NAACP Youth Council and had been learning about the civil rights movement in school. 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. "If it had been for an old lady, I would have got up, but it wasn't. The driver wanted all of them to move to the back and stand so that the white passenger could sit. [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 BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Like Colvin, Parks was commuting home and was seated in the "coloured section" of the bus. "I was scared and it was really, really frightening, it was like those Western movies where they put the bandit in the jail cell and you could hear the keys. People often make death hoaxes of well-known personalities to get public attention and views. [43] The judge ordered that the juvenile record be expunged and destroyed in December 2021, stating that Colvin's refusal had "been recognized as a courageous act on her behalf and on behalf of a community of affected people". When Ms Nesbitt, her 10th grade teacher, asked the class to write down what they wanted to be, she unfolded a piece of paper with Colvin's handwriting on it that said: "President of the United States. "It took on the form of harassment. Claudette Colvin's birthstone is Sapphire. 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. 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. Browder vs Gayle Claudette Colvin, Aurelia S Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanette Reese were plaintiffs in the court case of Browder vs Gayle. [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. "Aren't you going to get up?" However, her story is often silenced. She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. ", To complicate matters, a pregnant black woman, Mrs Hamilton, got on and sat next to Colvin. 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. 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. Officers were called to the scene and Colvin was forcefully taken off of the bus and . "Move y'all, I want those two seats," he yelled. One month later, the Supreme Court affirmed the order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation. 2023 BBC. She worked there for 35 years, retiring in 2004. Her timing was superb. I was crying," she says. "She had been tracked down by the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times." Like Colvin, Parks refused, and was arrested and fined. She is a civil rights activist from the 1950s and a retired nurse aide. A memorial service will be held at 11:00 AM, Saturday, March 4, 2023, at East Juliette . It wasn't a bad area, but it had a reputation." The three black passengers sitting alongside Parks rose reluctantly. She and her son Raymond moved in with Velma while Colvin looked for work. Her pastor was called and came to pick her up. She worked there for 35 years until her . Colvin has retired from her job and has been living her life. Black people were allowed to occupy those seats so long as white people didn't need them. "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. "You got to get up," they shouted. (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press). That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person. . But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. Anything to detach herself from the horror of reality. Colvin's son Raymond died in 1993. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. 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. Today, she sits in a diner in the Bronx, her pudding-basin haircut framing a soft face with a distant smile. Colvin later moved to New York City and worked as a nurse's aide. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement tried to keep up appearances and make the "most appealing" protesters the most seen. [30] Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Nonetheless, Raymond died at the age of 37, reported Core Online. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. "Mrs Parks was a married woman," said ED Nixon. Mayor Todd Strange presented the proclamation and, when speaking of Colvin, said, "She was an early foot soldier in our civil rights, and we did not want this opportunity to go by without declaring March 2 as Claudette Colvin Day to thank her for her leadership in the modern day civil rights movement." After decades of estrangement, Parks once telephoned Colvin in the late 1980s and invited her to hear Parks speak at a community college. Respectfully and faithfully yours. Colvin was initially charged with disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and battering and assaulting a police officer. Colvin was a kid. In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming . 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. In 1955, at age 15, Claudette Colvin . For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. Colvins feisty testimony was instrumental in the shocking success of the suit, which ended segregated seating on Montgomerys buses. The death news of Colvin, which has been going on the Internet, is untrue; she is alive and is 83. Click to reveal Phillip Hoose. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmother's heroism. After her refusal to give up her seat, Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city's segregation laws. 10. ", The upshot was that Colvin was left in an incredibly vulnerable position. "I told Mrs Parks, as I had told other leaders in Montgomery, that I thought the Claudette Colvin arrest was a good test case to end segregation on the buses," says Fred Gray, Parks's lawyer. Despite the light sentence, Colvin could not escape the court of public opinion. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. Blake approached her. 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. ", "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day," said Rosa Parks. "Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' She still has one - a handwritten note from William Harris in Sacramento. A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner. "He asked us both to get up. "For nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity. "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. Daryl Bailey, the District Attorney for the county, supported her motion, stating: "Her actions back in March of 1955 were conscientious, not criminal; inspired, not illegal; they should have led to praise and not prosecution". But go to King Hill and mention her name, and the first thing they will tell you is that she was the first. A sanitation worker, Mr Harris, got up, gave her his seat and got off the bus. "If any of you are not gentlemen enough to give a lady a seat, you should be put in jail yourself," he said. [36], Colvin and her family have been fighting for recognition for her action. 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. 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." If I had told my father who did it, he would have killed him. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Blake persisted. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. ", 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. [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. The baby was fair-skinned just like his dad and people accused her of having a white baby. This led to a few articles and profiles by others in subsequent years. Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. But there were two things about Colvin's stand on that March day that made it significant. Born in Alabama #33. Unable to find work in Montgomery, Colvin moved to New York in 1958, while her son Raymond remained behind with family. Parks stayed put. [17][18][6] This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. [24] She was convicted on all three charges in juvenile court. Read about our approach to external linking. The organisation didn't want a teenager in the role, she says. The Montgomery bus boycott was then called off after a few months. Four years later, they executed him. 9. - 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. Tour: Black America and the burden of the perfect victim. 1956- Colvin was one of four Black women who served as plaintiffs in a federal court suit 1956- Had her child, his name was Raymond 1957- People were bombing black churches 1957- Congress approved the Civil Rights Act of 1957 Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939)[1][2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. [30][31] Her son, Randy, is an accountant in Atlanta and father of Colvin's four grandchildren. The court declared her a ward of the state and remanded her to the custody of her family. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. "I didn't know if they were crazy, if they were going to take me to a Klan meeting. Second, she was the first person, in Montgomery at least, to take up the challenge. One white woman defended Colvin to the police; another said that, if she got away with this, "they will take over". The majority of customers on the bus system were African American, but they were discriminated against by its custom of segregated seating. 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. "And since it had to happen, I'm happy it happened to a person like Mrs Parks," said Martin Luther King from the pulpit of the Holt Street Baptist Church. NPR's Margot Adler has said that black organizations believed that Rosa Parks would be a better figure for a test case for integration because she was an adult, had a job, and had a middle-class appearance. In 1969, years after moving to NYC, she acquired a job working as a Nurse's aide at a Nursing home. 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. [30], Colvin was a predecessor to the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 1955, which gained national attention. "When ED Nixon and the Women's Political Council of Montgomery recognised that you could be that hero, you met the challenge and changed our lives forever. How encouraging it would be if more adults had your courage, self-respect and integrity. "I would sit in the back and no one would even know I was there. He contacted Montgomery Councilmen Charles Jinright and Tracy Larkin, and in 2017, the Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. 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. 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. Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a retired American nurse aide who was a pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement. But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. 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. She sat in the colored section about two seats away from an emergency exit, in a Capitol Heights bus. [37], "All we want is the truth, why does history fail to get it right?" She became quiet and withdrawn. In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks defied segregation laws by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 15-year-old Claudette . She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. 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. Two more kicks soon followed. 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. Claudette Colvin was born Claudette Austin in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 5, 1939, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin. Claudette Colvin is an activist who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s. 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. 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. She prayed furiously as they sped out, with the cop leering over her, guessing at her bra size. The United States District Court ruled the state of Alabama and Montgomery's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. "They put him on death row." Just as her case was beginning to catch the nation's imagination, she became pregnant. Yet months before her arrest on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a 15-year-old girl was charged with the same 'crime'. In 2009, the writer Phillip Hoose published a book that told her story in detail for the first time. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. Claudette Colvin : biography. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail," she says. The three other girls got up; Colvin stayed put. Your IP: 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). During her pregnancy, she was abandoned by civil rights leaders. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. "I had almost a life history of being rebellious against being mistreated against my colour," she said. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus." For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. "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. Rita Dove penned the poem "Claudette Colvin Goes to Work," which later became a song. She shops with her workmates and watches action movies on video. 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. The court, however, ruled against her and put her on probation. Broken-down cars sit outside tumble-down houses. Claudette Colvin was an American civil rights activist during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. The bus went three stops before several white passengers got on. "She was not the first person to be arrested for violation of the bus seating ordinance," said J Mills Thornton, an author and academic. 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. They felt she had the maturity to handle being at the center of potential controversy. She retired in 2004. "When I was in the ninth grade, all the police cars came to get Jeremiah," says Colvin. [4][18] Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to breaking the law. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. She was convicted on all charges, appealed and lost again. [2] She was also a member of the NAACP Youth Council, where she formed a close relationship with her mentor, Rosa Parks. Claudette Colvin Popularity . 45.148.121.138 So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman. 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. "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. They remember her as a confident, studious, young girl with a streak that was rebellious without being boisterous. 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 sitting on the last seat that they said you could sit in. 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. 1939- Claudette was born in Birmingham 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the presidential term of office . Ward and Paul Headley. Virgo Civil Rights Leader #2. James Edward "Jungle Jim" Colvin, 69, of Juliette, Georgia, passed away on Saturday, February 25, 2023. The urban bustle surrounding her could not seem further away from King Hill. 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. 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. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. She withdrew from college, and struggled in the local environment. He was . Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. 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]. "Nobody slept at home because we thought there would be some retaliation," says Colvin. Another cracked a joke about her bra size. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. Colvin says that after Supreme Court made its decision, things slowly began to change. "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." Two police officers arrived and pulled her from her seat. [2][14] Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. And, from there, the short distance to sanctity: they called her "Saint Rosa", "an angel walking", "a heaven-sent messenger". Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. In July 2014, Claudette Colvin's story was documented in a television episode of Drunk History (Montgomery, AL (Season 2, Episode 1)). But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. Colvin could not attend the proclamation due to health concerns. The baby was fair-skinned just like his dad and people accused her of having white... 31 ] her son Raymond moved in with Velma while Colvin looked work... Of what happened next pulled her from her seat on a bus in 1955 when Colvin was shocked by zeitgeist. Them in so much detail, '' said ED Nixon Capitol Heights bus inspired these... Had told my father who did it, he would have got up ; Colvin put! Got off the bus of them to move boycott was then called off after a few articles profiles. The suit, which ended segregated seating my colour, '' says Colvin framing soft. That she was n't Alabama and Montgomery & # x27 ; s birthstone sapphire... 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