Now 76 and retired, Colvin deserves her place in history. Rosa Parks was neither a victim nor a saint, but a long-standing political activist and feminist. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' [37], "All we want is the truth, why does history fail to get it right?" Colvin was a member of the NAACP Youth Council and had been learning about the civil rights movement in school. Her son Raymond Colvin died of a heart attack in 1993. "She was not the first person to be arrested for violation of the bus seating ordinance," said J Mills Thornton, an author and academic. They would have come and seen my parents and found me someone to marry. [39] Later, Rev. 2023 BBC. The urban bustle surrounding her could not seem further away from King Hill. Best Known For: Claudette Colvin is an activist who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s. Raymond D. Gunderson, age 91, of Hot Springs, passed away Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023. Going to a segregated school had one advantage, she found - her teachers gave her a good grounding in black history. 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. "Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom.". 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. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. [30], Colvin was a predecessor to the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 1955, which gained national attention. [17][18][6] This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. [27], In New York, Colvin and her son Raymond initially lived with her older sister, Velma Colvin. Claudette Colvin, 81, was a true pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement. But what I do remember is when they asked me to stick my arms out the window and that's when they handcuffed me," Colvin says. Colvin was initially charged with disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and battering and assaulting a police officer. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed the District Court decision on November 13, 1956. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. "[22] Colvin was handcuffed, arrested, and forcibly removed from the bus. Her first son died in 1993. But it is also a rare and excellent one that gives her more than a passing, dismissive mention. Somehow, as Mrs. "She was a bookworm," says Gloria Hardin, who went to school with Colvin and who still lives in King Hill. Claudette Colvin and her guardians relocated to Montgomery when . Telephones rang. In 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks' famous act of defiance, Claudette Colvin, a Black high school student in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat on a public . "But according to [the commissioner], she was the first person ever to enter a plea of not guilty to such a charge.". He could not bring himself to chide Mrs Hamilton in her condition, but he could not allow her to stay where she was and flout the law as he understood it, either. CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST, 81, BIRMINGHAM, AL. [23] She was bailed out by her minister, who told her that she had brought the revolution to Montgomery. 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. "I never swore when I was young," she says. "You may do that," said Parks, who is now 87 and lives in Detroit. 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. Betty Shabbaz, the widow of Malcolm X, was one of them. The discussions in the black community began to focus on black enterprise rather than integration, although national civil rights legislation did not pass until 1964 and 1965. [36], Colvin and her family have been fighting for recognition for her action. "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. Jeanetta Reese later resigned from the case. .css-m6thd4{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;display:block;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;font-family:Gilroy,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;color:#323232;text-transform:capitalize;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-m6thd4:hover{color:link-hover;}}How the Greensboro Four Began the Sit-In Movement, Biography: You Need to Know: Bayard Rustin, Biography: You Need to Know: Sylvia Rivera, Biography: You Need to Know: Dorothy Pittman Hughes, 10 Influential Asian American and Pacific Islander Activists. But somewhere en route they mislaid the truth. For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." Letters of support came from as far afield as Oregon and California. [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. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack, aged 37. But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. "I became very active in her youth group and we use to meet every Sunday afternoon at the Luther church," she says. ", "I wanted to go north and liberate my people," explains Colvin. I think that history only has room enough for certainyou know, how many icons can you choose? A poor, single, pregnant, black, teenage mother who had both taken on the white establishment and fallen foul of the black one. Read about our approach to external linking. Fifty years have passed since campaigners overturned a ban on ethnic minorities working on buses in one British city. History had me glued to the seat.. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to. 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. Two policemen boarded the bus and asked Colvin why she wouldn't give up her seat. This much we know. Raymond Colvin, age 62, a resident of Ft. Deposit, AL, died April 13, 2013. "She lived in a little shack. Colvin gave birth to Raymond, a son. As an adult, she worked as a nurse's assistant in New . 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. 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. Although some of the details might seem familiar, this is not the Rosa Parks story. I knew what was happening, but I just kept trying to shut it out.". It wasn't a bad area, but it had a reputation." ", 'Facts speak only when the historian calls on them," wrote the historian EH Carr in his landmark work, What Is History? 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." [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 Colvin is an activist who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s. 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. It is this that incenses Patton. Two more kicks soon followed. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history? ", Some in Montgomery, particularly in King Hill, think the decision was informed by snobbery. 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. Colvin could not attend the proclamation due to health concerns. The death news of Colvin, which has been going on the Internet, is untrue; she is alive and is 83. He contacted Montgomery Councilmen Charles Jinright and Tracy Larkin, and in 2017, the Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. [6][7] It is now widely accepted that Colvin was not accredited by civil rights campaigners at the time due to her circumstances. The problem arose because all the seats on the bus were taken. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) [1] [2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. March 2 was named Claudette Colvin Day in Montgomery. While Parks has been heralded as a civil rights heroine, Colvin's story has received little notice. American civil rights pioneer and former nurse's aide Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939. image credit; BBC. 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. asked the policeman. Charged with disturbing the peace, breaking the bus segregation laws and assaulting the officers who had apprehended her, she was released later that night. [27] During the court case, Colvin described her arrest: "I kept saying, 'He has no civil right this is my constitutional right you have no right to do this.' 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. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn't like themselves. 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. The young Ms. Colvin was portrayed by actress Mariah Iman Wilson. "So did the teachers, too. "He wanted me to give up my seat for a white person and I would have done it for an elderly person but this was a young white woman. She herself didn't talk about it much, but she spoke recently to the BBC. 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. 1939- Claudette was born in Birmingham 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the presidential term of office . A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman.'" Civil Rights Leader #7. Reeves was a teenage grocery delivery boy who was found having sex with a white woman. "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.". The Montgomery bus boycott was then called off after a few months. But attorney Gray found it all but impossible to find riders who would potentially risk their lives by attaching their names as plaintiffs. 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 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. "We had unpaved streets and outside toilets. Taylor Branch. Joseph Rembert said, "If nobody did anything for Claudette Colvin in the past why don't we do something for her right now?" Your IP: Parks stayed put. Colvin took her seat near the emergency door next to one black girl; two others sat across the aisle from her. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. The driver kept on going but stopped when he reached a junction where a police squad car was waiting. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. Her parents were Mary Jane Gadson and C.P. Until recently, none of her workmates knew anything of her pioneering role in the civil rights movement. We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,contact us! Her son, Raymond, was born in March 1956. 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. [29], Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond, in March 1956. "But when she was found guilty, her agonised sobs penetrated the atmosphere of the courthouse. ", But even as she inspired awe throughout the country, elders within Montgomery's black community began to doubt her suitability as a standard-bearer of the movement. 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. She was 15. Her rhythm is simple and lifestyle frugal. Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. 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. "They did think I was nutty and crazy.". You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. To the exclusively male and predominantly middle-class, church-dominated, local black leadership in Montgomery, she was a fallen woman. ", 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. They felt she had the maturity to handle being at the center of potential controversy. Click to reveal The September 5, 1939, birthdate of Claudette Colvin makes her a key player in the 1950s American civil rights movement. Mothers expressed concern about permitting their children on the buses. "You got to get up," they shouted. [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. Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. I was glued to my seat. [11][12], Two days before Colvin's 13th birthday, Delphine died of polio. 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. "There was no assault", Price said. Four years later, they executed him. Colvin is not exactly bitter. "[4][5] Colvin's case was dropped by civil rights campaigners because Colvin was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings. "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. Born in Alabama #33. They had threatened to throw her out of the Booker T Washington school for wearing her hair in plaits. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats.". "We didn't know what was going to happen, but we knew something would happen. [4][18] Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. Colvin went to her job instead. He was . "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. Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. And, like the pregnant Mrs Hamilton, many African-Americans refused to tolerate the indignity of the South's racist laws in silence. 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. She refused to name the father or have anything to do with him. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. "I didn't know if they were crazy, if they were going to take me to a Klan meeting. 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. Performance & security by Cloudflare. Claudette Colvin : biography. She concentrated her mind on things she had been learning at school. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. With funding from church donations and activities organized by the chapter, Colvin had her day in court. Her pastor was called and came to pick her up. I don't know how I got off that bus but the other students said they manhandled me off the bus and put me in the squad car. "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. The lighter you were, it was generally thought, the better; the closer your skin tone was to caramel, the closer you were perceived to be to whatever power structure prevailed, and the more likely you were to attract suspicion from those of a darker hue. They never came and discussed it with my parents. The full enormity of what she had done was only just beginning to dawn on her. The bus froze. She retired in 2004. "We just sat there and waited for it all to happen," says Gloria Hardin, who was on the bus, too. 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.. Parks was, too. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. And that person, it transpired, would be Rosa Parks. [5] Colvin did not receive the same attention as Parks for a number of reasons: she did not have "good hair", she was not fair-skinned, she was a teenager, she was pregnant. Sapphire was once thought to guard against evil and poisoning. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus." She retired in 2004. Aster is known as a talisman of love and an enduring symbol of elegance. [15], In 1955, Colvin was a student at the segregated Booker T. Washington High School in the city. After her refusal to give up her seat, Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city's segregation laws. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmother's heroism. Claudette Colvin Popularity . 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. I heard about the court decision on the news, Colvin recalled. She was played by Mariah Iman Wilson. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. [34], Colvin has often said she is not angry that she did not get more recognition; rather, she is disappointed. [16], Colvin was not the only woman of the Civil Rights Movement who was left out of the history books. "When I was in the ninth grade, all the police cars came to get Jeremiah," says Colvin. That summer she became pregnant by a much older man. BBC World Service. Growing up in one of Montgomery's poorer neighborhoods, Colvin studied hard in school. Claudette Colvin in 2009. Her reputation also made it impossible for her to find a job. She was born on September 5, 1939. Instead of being taken to a juvenile detention centre, Colvin was taken to an adult jail and put in a small cell with nothing in it but a broken sink and a cot without a mattress. A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner. 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. Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in the first federal court case filed by civil rights attorney Fred Gray on February 1, 1956, as Browder v. Gayle, to challenge bus segregation in the city. ", 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. During her pregnancy, she was abandoned by civil rights leaders. "Oh God," wailed one black woman at the back. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack at age 37. She dreamed of becoming the President of the United States. After her minister paid her bail, she went home where she and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation. "[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. Broken-down cars sit outside tumble-down houses. Peter Dreier: 50 years after the March on Washington, what would MLK march for today? For months, Montgomerys NAACP chapter had been looking for a court case to test the constitutionality of the bus laws. So he turned on the black men sitting behind her. 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. He was drug-addicted and alcoholic and passed away of a cardiac attack in Colvin's apartment. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1897c67fea0e3a 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. Under the twisted logic of segregation the white woman still couldn't sit down, as then white and black passengers would have been sharing a row of seats - and the whole point was that white passengers were meant to be closer to the front. "They just dropped me. [32], In 2005, Colvin told the Montgomery Advertiser that she would not have changed her decision to remain seated on the bus: "I feel very, very proud of what I did," she said. 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. Austin, but she was raised by her great-aunt and great-uncle, Mary Ann and Q.P. She spent the next decade going back and forth like a yo-yo between the two cities, she said. A 15-year-old high school student at the time, Colvin got fed up and refused to move even before Parks. [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". 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. Colvins feisty testimony was instrumental in the shocking success of the suit, which ended segregated seating on Montgomerys buses. It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. "I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. She became quiet and withdrawn. "Mrs Parks was a married woman," said ED Nixon. In a United States district court, she testified before the three-judge panel that heard the case. In 1960, she gave birth to her second son, Randy. In 1955, when she was 15, she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white womannine months before Rosa Parks's refusal in Montgomery sparked a bus boycott. She said she felt as if she was "getting [her] Christmas in January rather than the 25th. "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. "[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. 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