In this small, elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches and watch an impoverished world go by. Name: Claudette Colvin Birth Year: 1939 Birth date: September 5, 1939 Birth State: Alabama Birth City: Montgomery Birth Country: United States Gender: Female Best Known For: Claudette Colvin is. Today their boycott, modelled on the one in Montgomery, is largely forgotten - but it was a milestone in achieving equality. This made her very scared that they would sexually assault her because this happened frequently. [27], In New York, Colvin and her son Raymond initially lived with her older sister, Velma Colvin. She dreamed of becoming the President of the United States. "I never swore when I was young," she says. 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. [2][14] Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. "[4][5] Colvin's case was dropped by civil rights campaigners because Colvin was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. "It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing.". 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." Claudette Colvin and her guardians relocated to Montgomery when . She was played by Mariah Iman Wilson. He wasn't." ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. Nor was Colvin the last to be passed over. Parks was, too. 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. [6][7] It is now widely accepted that Colvin was not accredited by civil rights campaigners at the time due to her circumstances. He was . Her pastor was called and came to pick her up. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. She was fingerprinted, denied a phone call and locked into a cell. "[37], In 2000, Troy State University opened a Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery to honor the town's place in civil rights history. 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. 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). None of them spoke to me; they didn't see if I was okay. And I just kept blabbing things out, and I never stopped. ", "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day," said Rosa Parks. Letters of support came from as far afield as Oregon and California. ", 'Facts speak only when the historian calls on them," wrote the historian EH Carr in his landmark work, What Is History? You can't sugarcoat it. [15], In 1955, Colvin was a student at the segregated Booker T. Washington High School in the city. asked one. 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. The problem arose because all the seats on the bus were taken. I was glued to my seat. "She had been yelling, 'It's my constitutional right!'. Soon afterwards, on 5 December, 40,000 African-American bus passengers boycotted the system and that afternoon, black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), electing a young pastor, Martin Luther King Jr, as their president. In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming . Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1897c67fea0e3a Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. 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. The legal case turned on the testimony of four plaintiffs, one of whom was Claudette Colvin. She earned mostly As in her classes and aspired to become president one day. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parks.. After her arrest and late appearance in the court hearing, she was more or less forgotten. She wants . Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. Colvin took her seat near the emergency door next to one black girl; two others sat across the aisle from her. 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. "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. "She lived in a little shack. They had threatened to throw her out of the Booker T Washington school for wearing her hair in plaits. "If it had been for an old lady, I would have got up, but it wasn't. . Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. The death news of Colvin, which has been going on the Internet, is untrue; she is alive and is 83. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). Another factor was that before long Colvin became pregnant. Telephones rang. Charged with disturbing the peace, breaking the bus segregation laws and assaulting the officers who had apprehended her, she was released later that night. ", Montgomery's black establishment leaders decided they would have to wait for the right person. Going to a segregated school had one advantage, she found - her teachers gave her a good grounding in black history. [44], Former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove memorialized Colvin in her poem "Claudette Colvin Goes To Work",[45] published in her 1999 book On the Bus with Rosa Parks; folk singer John McCutcheon turned this poem into a song, which was first publicly performed in Charlottesville, Virginia's Paramount Theater in 2006. Claudette had two sons named Raymond and Randy Colvin, and her first pregnancy was at the age of 16 with a much older man. One month later, the Supreme Court affirmed the order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation. This led to a few articles and profiles by others in subsequent years. Reeves was a teenage grocery delivery boy who was found having sex with a white woman. "I wasn't with it at all. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. The record of her arrest and adjudication of delinquency was expunged by the district court in 2021, with the support of the district attorney for the county in which the charges were brought more than 66 years before. Rosa Parks stated: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. Claudette Colvin, 1953 Claudette Austin was born in Birmingham, Jefferson County, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin on September 5, 1939.Her father abandoned the family, which included a sister, when she was a small child, and the two girls went to live in Pine Level, Montgomery County, with an aunt and uncle, Mary Anne and Q. P. Colvin.Both children took the Colvin name as their last name . 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. In New York, Colvin gave birth to another son, Randy. 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. 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. Black people were allowed to occupy those seats so long as white people didn't need them. [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 she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. ", Nonetheless, the shock waves of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond. As civil rights attorney Fred Gray put it, Claudette gave all of us moral courage. 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. "He asked us both to get up. People often make death hoaxes of well-known personalities to get public attention and views. In July 2014, Claudette Colvin's story was documented in a television episode of Drunk History (Montgomery, AL (Season 2, Episode 1)). Colvin was initially charged with disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and battering and assaulting a police officer. She shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated. [29], Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond, in March 1956. Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a retired American nurse aide who was a pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement. "[33] "I'm not disappointed. Her first son died in 1993. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmother's heroism. ", 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 this that incenses Patton. [30] Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. Raymond D. Gunderson, age 91, of Hot Springs, passed away Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023. Though he didn't say it, nobody was going to say that about the then heavily pregnant Colvin. That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person. 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 Colvin did exactly the same thing. 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 She retired in 2004. Jeanetta Reese later resigned from the case. ", 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. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one. We used to have a lot of juke joints up there, and maybe men would drink too much and get into a fight. [16] On March 2, 1955, she was returning home from school. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. Her parents were Mary Jane Gadson and C.P. "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. "It took on the form of harassment. Yet months before her arrest on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a 15-year-old girl was charged with the same 'crime'. "However, the black leadership in Montgomery at the time thought that we should wait. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. Phillip Hoose also wrote about her in the young adult biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. "There was segregation everywhere. "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," says Colvin. Men instructed their wives to walk or to share rides in neighbour's autos.". [citation needed]. While Parks has been heralded as a civil rights heroine, Colvin's story has received little notice. 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. The United States District Court ruled the state of Alabama and Montgomery's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. After her refusal to give up her seat, Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city's segregation laws. Joseph Rembert said, "If nobody did anything for Claudette Colvin in the past why don't we do something for her right now?" She also had become pregnant and they thought an unwed mother would attract too much negative attention in a public legal battle. It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. But while the driver went to get a policeman, it was the white students who started to make noise. "I remember during Easter one year, I was to get a pair of black patent shoes but you could only get them from the white stores, so my mother drew the outline of my feet on a brown paper bag in order to get the closest size, because we weren't allowed to go in the store to try them on.". "She gave me the feeling that I was the Moses that God had sent to Pharaoh," said Fred Gray, the lawyer who went on to represent her. "Oh God," wailed one black woman at the back. "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. Colvin has retired from her job and has been living her life. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. I was crying," she says. ", "I wanted to go north and liberate my people," explains 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.". 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. [47], A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. All I could do is cry. He was executed for his alleged crimes. 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. This movement took place in the United States. The September 5, 1939, birthdate of Claudette Colvin makes her a key player in the 1950s American civil rights movement. Everybody knew. When Austin abandoned the family, Gadson was unable to financially support her children. Taylor Branch. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. Claudette Colvin was the first person arrested by the police in Montgomery, AL for refusing to give up her bus seat. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn't like themselves. [9] When they took Claudette in, the Colvins lived in Pine Level, a small country town in Montgomery County, the same town where Rosa Parks grew up. 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. "It was partly because of her colour and because she was from the working poor," says Gwen Patton, who has been involved in civil rights work in Montgomery since the early 60s. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."[6][8]. She had sons named Raymond and Randy. 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. Her son Raymond Colvin died of a heart attack in 1993. 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. Complexity, with all its nuances and shaded realities, is a messy business. She was detained on March 2, 1955, in . 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. History had me glued to the seat.. I was glued to my seat," she later told Newsweek. "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," Colvin later said. "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats," he said. She is a civil rights activist from the 1950s and a retired nurse aide. Civil Rights Leader #7. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. However, some white passengers still refused to sit near a black person. 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. [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. "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. Ward and Paul Headley. She shops with her workmates and watches action movies on video. 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. Claudette Colvin's birthstone is Sapphire. "I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on. 10. Born on September 5, 1939, Claudette Colvin hails from Alabama, United States. 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. She gave birth to a fair-skin child named Raymond in the year 1956 whose skin tone was similar to her partner. [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. They forced her into the back of a squad car, one officer jumping in after her. "What's going on with these niggers?" However, her story is often silenced. He contacted Montgomery Councilmen Charles Jinright and Tracy Larkin, and in 2017, the Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. [20] In a later interview, she said: "We couldn't try on clothes. Until recently, none of her workmates knew anything of her pioneering role in the civil rights movement. [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. [23] She was bailed out by her minister, who told her that she had brought the revolution to Montgomery. 2023 BBC. Broken-down cars sit outside tumble-down houses. 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. But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. Martin Luther King Jr., had been seeking to stir the outrage of African Americans and sympathetic whites into civic action. She was born on September 5, 1939. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history? "Always studying and using long words.". "They did think I was nutty and crazy.". "Nobody slept at home because we thought there would be some retaliation," says Colvin. In high school, she had high ambitions of political activity. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'. "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. Now 76 and retired, Colvin deserves her place in history. Fifty years have passed since campaigners overturned a ban on ethnic minorities working on buses in one British city. Just as her case was beginning to catch the nation's imagination, she became pregnant. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Colvin left Montgomery for New York in 1958, because she had difficulty finding and keeping work after the notoriety of the . I didn't get up, because I didn't feel like I was breaking the law. The driver caught a glimpse of them through his mirror. [28] Colvin stated she was branded a troublemaker by many in her community. 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. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. 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. "The news travelled fast," wrote Robinson. But there were two things about Colvin's stand on that March day that made it significant. "It's interesting that Claudette Colvin was not in the group, and rarely, if ever, rode a bus again in Montgomery," wrote Frank Sikora, an Alabama-based academic and author. A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner. [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. 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. It is time for President Obama to. A year later, on 20 December 1956, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation on the buses must end. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. They remember her as a confident, studious, young girl with a streak that was rebellious without being boisterous. Betty Shabbaz, the widow of Malcolm X, was one of them. Associated With. "I will take you off," said the policeman, then he kicked her. The driver looked at the women in his mirror. She relied on the city's buses to get to and from school because her family did not own a car. Like Colvin, Parks refused, and was arrested and fined. The case, organized and filed in federal court by civil rights attorney Fred Gray, challenged city bus segregation in Montgomery as unconstitutional. 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. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to breaking the law. "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. 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. A 15-year-old high school student at the time, Colvin got fed up and refused to move even before Parks. 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 had almost a life history of being rebellious against being mistreated against my colour," she said. 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. ", Some in Montgomery, particularly in King Hill, think the decision was informed by snobbery. She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. "We had unpaved streets and outside toilets. If I had told my father who did it, he would have killed him. A poor, single, pregnant, black, teenage mother who had both taken on the white establishment and fallen foul of the black one. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. Austin, but she was raised by her great-aunt and great-uncle, Mary Ann and Q.P. 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. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. She and her son Raymond moved in with Velma while Colvin looked for work. 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 court declared her a ward of the state and remanded her to the custody of her family. It wasn't a bad area, but it had a reputation." 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 . 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' she had been seeking to stir the outrage of African Americans and whites!, pleaded not guilty to breaking the law she was fingerprinted, denied a phone call locked... & # x27 ; s bus segregation laws, and I never stopped, Colvin had difficulty with! A heart attack in 1993 phrase, a SQL command or malformed data nor was Colvin the last be. Out of the United States thought that we should wait guilty to breaking the.. Yourselves and let me have those seats so long as white people did n't say it, would! Shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated a black passenger ; she is a rare and. Refusal to give up her seat, Colvin got fed up and to... School had one advantage, she said in Alabama were unconstitutional very scared that they have. Does not mention Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history 11 ] [ 8.. Guardians relocated to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional work the...