In 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. Colvin left Montgomery for New York in 1958, because she had difficulty finding and keeping work after the notoriety of the . But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. If I had told my father who did it, he would have killed him. In this respect, the civil rights movement in Montgomery moved fast. [34], Colvin has often said she is not angry that she did not get more recognition; rather, she is disappointed. She had sons named Raymond and Randy. She spent the next decade going back and forth like a yo-yo between the two cities, she said. In 2009, the writer Phillip Hoose published a book that told her story in detail for the first time. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. "I went bipolar. "I never swore when I was young," she says. 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. She has literally become a footnote in history. 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. Officers were called to the scene and Colvin was forcefully taken off of the bus and . Growing up in one of Montgomery's poorer neighborhoods, Colvin studied hard in school. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack at age 37. Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Colvin is not exactly bitter. They just didn't want to know me. Claudette Colvin was the first person arrested by the police in Montgomery, AL for refusing to give up her bus seat. 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. Her reputation also made it impossible for her to find a job. "I waited for about three hours until my mother arrived with my pastor to bail me out. Virgo Civil Rights Leader #2. 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. 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. [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. 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. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. Read about our approach to external linking. Colvin has said, "Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all. "She had remained calm all during the days of her waiting period and during the trial," wrote Robinson. 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. "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. Claudette Colvin : biography. [30] Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack, aged 37. "Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom.". She prayed furiously as they sped out, with the cop leering over her, guessing at her bra size. "She had been yelling, 'It's my constitutional right!'. "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. "I wasn't with it at all. 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. One month later, the Supreme Court affirmed the order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation. It was going to be a long night on Dixie Drive. In New York, Colvin gave birth to another son, Randy. She earned mostly As in her classes and aspired to become president one day. Her son Raymond Colvin died of a heart attack in 1993. "There was segregation everywhere. ", 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. Ms. Colvin in New York on Feb. 5, 2009. None of them spoke to me; they didn't see if I was okay. 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. [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. The bus froze. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. Colvin was initially charged with disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and battering and assaulting a police officer. And, like Parks, the local black establishment started to rally support nationwide for her cause. She told me to let Rosa be the one: white people aren't going to bother Rosa, they like her". One white woman defended Colvin to the police; another said that, if she got away with this, "they will take over". That's what they usually did.". ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. 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. That summer she became pregnant by a much older man. She appreciated, but never embraced, King's strategy of nonviolent resistance, remains a keen supporter of Malcolm X and was constantly frustrated by sexism in the movement. By Monday, the day the boycott began, Colvin had already been airbrushed from the official version of events. [20] In a later interview, she said: "We couldn't try on clothes. ", They took her to City Hall, where she was charged with misconduct, resisting arrest and violating the city segregation laws. Ward and Paul Headley. Letters of support came from as far afield as Oregon and California. It wasn't a bad area, but it had a reputation." Raymond Colvin, age 62, a resident of Ft. Deposit, AL, died April 13, 2013. Nor was Colvin the last to be passed over. "The light-skinned girls always thought they were better looking," says Colvin. 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. "The white people were always seated at the front of the bus and the black people were seated at the back of the bus. Telephones rang. "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. On 2 March 1955, Colvin and her friends finished their classes and were let out of school early. [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. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. 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. Parks became one of Time Magazine's 100 most important people of the 20th century . It is time for President Obama to award Colvin the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian honor, to recognize her sacrifice and passionate dedication to social justice. Most Americans, even in Montgomery, have never heard of her. The majority of customers on the bus system were African American, but they were discriminated against by its custom of segregated seating. Rosa Parks was thrown off the bus on a Thursday; by Friday, activists were distributing leaflets that highlighted her arrest as one of many, including those of Colvin and Mary Louise Smith: "Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down," they read. CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST, 81, BIRMINGHAM, AL. The boycott was very effective but the city still resisted complying with protesters' demands - an end to the policy preventing the hiring of black bus drivers and the introduction of first-come first-seated rule. The urban bustle surrounding her could not seem further away from King Hill. 1939- Claudette was born in Birmingham 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the presidential term of office . She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. Some people questioned if the father was a white male. "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." "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. She retired in 2004. 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. [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. "It is he who decides which facts to give the floor and in what order or context. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'. 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. Those who are aware of these distortions in the civil rights story are few. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to. 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. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. I was sitting on the last seat that they said you could sit in. [39] Later, Rev. 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. Similarly, Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Detroit in 1957. [50], In 2022, a biopic of Colvin titled Spark written by Niceole R. Levy and directed by Anthony Mackie was announced. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939)[1][2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move. 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. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. "The news travelled fast," wrote Robinson. King's role in the boycott transformed him into a national figure of the civil rights movement, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. 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.'". "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. Fifty years have passed since campaigners overturned a ban on ethnic minorities working on buses in one British city. 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. She fell out of history altogether. She said, "They've already called it the Rosa Parks museum, so they've already made up their minds what the story is. But, unlike Parks, Colvin never made it into the civil rights hall of fame. "So I went and I testified about the system and I was saying that the system treated us unfairly and I used some of the language that they used when we got taken off the bus.". The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn't even go into the same restaurants," Claudette Colvin says. ", Montgomery's black establishment leaders decided they would have to wait for the right person. - 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. I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' She sat in the colored section about two seats away from an emergency exit, in a Capitol Heights bus. "Mrs Parks was a married woman," said ED Nixon. Going to a segregated school had one advantage, she found - her teachers gave her a good grounding in black history. Colvins feisty testimony was instrumental in the shocking success of the suit, which ended segregated seating on Montgomerys buses. The police arrived and convinced a black man sitting behind the two women to move so that Mrs. Hamilton could move back, but Colvin still refused to move. Months before Rosa Parks became the mother of the modern civil rights movement by refusing to move to the back of a segregated Alabama bus, Black teenager Claudette Colvin did the same. I was glad that an adult had finally stood up to the system, but I felt left out.. ", Nonetheless, the shock waves of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond. I knew what was happening, but I just kept trying to shut it out.". "For nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity. 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. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner. Before the Rosa Parks incident took place, Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging the bus segregation system. Associated With. [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. While this does not happen by conspiracy, it is often facilitated by collusion. "I make up stories to convince them to stay in bed." This much we know. She was born on September 5, 1939. Montgomery was not home to the first bus boycott any more than Colvin was the first person to challenge segregation. "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats," he said. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. The three other girls got up; Colvin stayed put. Unlike Colvin who had a darker skin color, Raymond was very light-skinned. She concentrated her mind on things she had been learning at school. She needed support. 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. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. Performance & security by Cloudflare. She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. "[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. By the time she got home, her parents already knew. However, not one has bothered to interview her. The driver looked at the women in his mirror. 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. Video1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat, How 10% of Nigerian registered voters delivered victory, Sake brewers toast big rise in global sales, The Indian-American CEO who wants to be US president, Blackpink lead top stars back on the road in Asia, Exploring the rigging claims in Nigeria's elections, 'Wales is in England' gaffe sparks TikToker's trip. "Well, I'm going to have you arrested," he replied. "She had been tracked down by the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times." "New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama. A 15-year-old high school student at the time, Colvin got fed up and refused to move even before Parks. While Parks has been heralded as a civil rights heroine, Colvin's story has received little notice. Claudette Colvin's birth flower is Aster/Myosotis. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. By then I didnt have much time for celebrating anyway. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman. Rita Dove penned the poem "Claudette Colvin Goes to Work," which later became a song. The baby was fair-skinned just like his dad and people accused her of having a white baby. Colvin was also very dark-skinned, which put her at the bottom of the social pile within the black community - in the pigmentocracy of the South at the time, and even today, while whites discriminated against blacks on grounds of skin colour, the black community discriminated against each other in terms of skin shade. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. "If any of you are not gentlemen enough to give a lady a seat, you should be put in jail yourself," he said. He was executed for his alleged crimes. 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