She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. 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. They felt she had the maturity to handle being at the center of potential controversy. Before the Rosa Parks incident took place, Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging the bus segregation system. Black people were allowed to occupy those seats so long as white people didn't need them. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist who, before .css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}Rosa Parks, refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," says Colvin. [39] Later, Rev. 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. "[38], Colvin's role has not gone completely unrecognized. She told me to let Rosa be the one: white people aren't going to bother Rosa, they like her". "In a few hours, every Negro youngster on the streets discussed Colvin's arrest. State and local officials appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. He was born on March 3, 1931, in Mound City, S.D., the son of Alfred Gunderson and Verna Johnson Gunderson. She was 15. "I respect my elders, but I don't respect what they did to Colvin," she says. 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. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. It was a case of 'bourgey' blacks looking down on the working-class blacks. That's what they usually did.". Read about our approach to external linking. That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person. Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. After her refusal to give up her seat, Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city's segregation laws. By Monday, the day the boycott began, Colvin had already been airbrushed from the official version of events. "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.". 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. 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. And that person, it transpired, would be Rosa Parks. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. "They lectured us about Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and we were taught about an opera singer called Marian Anderson who wasn't allowed to sing at Constitutional Hall just because she was black, so she sang at Lincoln Memorial instead.". Colvin gave birth to her first son Raymond Jun 5, 1956. You can't sugarcoat it. Like Colvin, Parks refused, and was arrested and fined. Angry protests erupt over Greek rail disaster, Explosive found in check-in luggage at US airport, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. [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. 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. Meanwhile, Parks had been transformed from a politically-conscious activist to an upstanding, unfortunate Everywoman. Her timing was superb. Two police officers arrived and pulled her from her seat. "[37], In 2000, Troy State University opened a Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery to honor the town's place in civil rights history. Her first son died in 1993. 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. She refused to name the father or have anything to do with him. And, from there, the short distance to sanctity: they called her "Saint Rosa", "an angel walking", "a heaven-sent messenger". Four years later, they executed him. 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. It was believed that a venomous snake would die if placed in a vessel made of sapphire. Rembert said, "I know people have heard her name before, but I just thought we should have a day to celebrate her." 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. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats.". He was drug-addicted and alcoholic and passed away of a cardiac attack in Colvin's apartment. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. It is time for President Obama to. 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. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmother's heroism. It reads: "The wonderful thing which you have just done makes me feel like a craven coward. "For nobody can doubt the boundless outreach of her integrity. She also had become pregnant and they thought an unwed mother would attract too much negative attention in a public legal battle. Claudette Colvin : biography. "He asked us both to get up. "The news travelled fast," wrote Robinson. All Rights Reserved. Another cracked a joke about her bra size. In July 2014, Claudette Colvin's story was documented in a television episode of Drunk History (Montgomery, AL (Season 2, Episode 1)). In August that year, a 14-year-old boy called Emmet Till had said, "Bye, baby", to a woman at a store in nearby Mississippi, and was fished out of the nearby Tallahatchie river a few days later, dead with a bullet in his skull, his eye gouged out and one side of his forehead crushed. [16], Through the trial Colvin was represented by Fred Gray, a lawyer for the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which was organizing civil rights actions. "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. Colvin says Parks had the right image to become the face of resistance to segregation because of her previous work with the NAACP. Colvin could not attend the proclamation due to health concerns. She shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated. The death news of Colvin, which has been going on the Internet, is untrue; she is alive and is 83. ", Nonetheless, the shock waves of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond. [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. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. 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. 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. In New York, Colvin gave birth to another son, Randy. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. As well as the predictable teenage fantasy of "marrying a baseball player", she also had strong political convictions. None of them spoke to me; they didn't see if I was okay. In 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond. "You may do that," said Parks, who is now 87 and lives in Detroit. One month later, the Supreme Court declined to reconsider, and on December 20, 1956, the court ordered Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation permanently. It is this that incenses Patton. 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. ", Montgomery's black establishment leaders decided they would have to wait for the right person. "She had been yelling, 'It's my constitutional right!'. "The light-skinned girls always thought they were better looking," says Colvin. He was so light-skinned (like his father) that people frequently said she had a baby by a white man. It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. Austin, but she was raised by her great-aunt and great-uncle, Mary Ann and Q.P. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. 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 . [4][18] Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' Colvin was not invited officially for the formal dedication of the museum, which opened to the public in September 2016. Claudette Colvin became a teenage mother in 1956 when she gave birth to a boy named Raymond. Colvin is not exactly bitter. Colvin. Today, she sits in a diner in the Bronx, her pudding-basin haircut framing a soft face with a distant smile. She refused, saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. "For a while, there was a real distance between me and Mrs Parks over this. ", The upshot was that Colvin was left in an incredibly vulnerable position. This made her very scared that they would sexually assault her because this happened frequently. She and her son Raymond moved in with Velma while Colvin looked for work. ", 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. Much of the writing on civil rights history in Montgomery has focused on the arrest of Parks, another woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus, nine months after Colvin. He wasn't." Tour: Black America and the burden of the perfect victim. "Are you going to stand up?" American civil rights pioneer and former nurse's aide Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939. image credit; BBC. 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. [49], The Little-Known Heroes: Claudette Colvin, a children's picture book by Kaushay and Spencer Ford, was published in 2021. A memorial service will be held at 11:00 AM, Saturday, March 4, 2023, at East Juliette . ", "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day," said Rosa Parks. A 15-year-old high school student at the time, Colvin got fed up and refused to move even before Parks. It was March 2, 1955 and fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was taking the bus in order to get home after her day of attending classes. She dreamed of becoming the President of the United States. "So did the teachers, too. . "Claudette gave all of us moral courage. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."[6][8]. Colvin's sister, Gloria Laster, said. . Her son Raymond Colvin died of a heart attack in 1993. Rosa Parks stated: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. [2][13] Not long after, in September 1952, Colvin started attending Booker T. Washington High School. In this respect, the civil rights movement in Montgomery moved fast. Claudette Colvin's birthstone is Sapphire. "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. "There was segregation everywhere. Her son, Raymond, was born in March 1956. [Mrs. Hamilton] said she was not going to get up and that she had paid her fare and that she didn't feel like standing," recalls Colvin. "She had remained calm all during the days of her waiting period and during the trial," wrote Robinson. [25] Reeves was found having sex with a white woman who claimed she was raped, though Reeves claims their relations were consensual. In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming . The full enormity of what she had done was only just beginning to dawn on her. But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. "[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. 05 September 1939 - Court trial. I started protecting my crotch. "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. 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. 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. She deserves our attention, our gratitude and a warm, bright spotlight all her own. By then I didnt have much time for celebrating anyway. Despite her personal challenges, Colvin became one of the four plaintiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case, along with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith (Jeanatta Reese, who was initially named a plaintiff in the case, withdrew early on due to outside pressure). [28] Colvin stated she was branded a troublemaker by many in her community. Funeral Services will be held Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. at the Ft. Deposit Municipal Complex with Pastor. James Edward "Jungle Jim" Colvin, 69, of Juliette, Georgia, passed away on Saturday, February 25, 2023. Performance & security by Cloudflare. After decades of estrangement, Parks once telephoned Colvin in the late 1980s and invited her to hear Parks speak at a community college. Telephones rang. "They said they didn't want to use a pregnant teenager because it would be controversial and the people would talk about the pregnancy more than the boycott," Colvin says. Later, she would tell a reporter that she would sometimes attend the rallies at the churches. Claudette Colvin was born Claudette Austin in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 5, 1939, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin. 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. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. [34], Colvin has often said she is not angry that she did not get more recognition; rather, she is disappointed. 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.'". 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. Almost nine months after Colvins bus protest, she heard news reports that Parks, a 42-year-old seamstress, had likewise been arrested for a bus seating protest. (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press). "We had unpaved streets and outside toilets. The decision in the 1956 case, which had been filed by Fred Gray and Charles D. Langford on behalf of the aforementioned African American women, ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. "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 turns, watches, wipes, feeds and washes the elderly patients and offers them a gentle, consoling word when they become disoriented. [36], Colvin and her family have been fighting for recognition for her action. Claudette Colvin in 2009. She made history at the young age of 15 by refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white woman. Nor was Colvin the last to be passed over. 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. In court, Colvin opposed the segregation law by declaring herself not guilty. For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. Broken-down cars sit outside tumble-down houses. A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner. Raymond D. Gunderson, age 91, of Hot Springs, passed away Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023. Martin Luther King Jr., had been seeking to stir the outrage of African Americans and sympathetic whites into civic action. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. 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. Now 76 and retired, Colvin deserves her place in history. Astrological Sign: Virgo, Article Title: Claudette Colvin Biography, Author: Biography.com Editors, Website Name: The Biography.com website, Url: https://www.biography.com/activists/claudette-colvin, Publisher: A&E; Television Networks, Last Updated: March 26, 2021, Original Published Date: April 2, 2014, I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. "Middle-class blacks looked down on King Hill," says Colvin today. It was an exchange later credited with changing the racial landscape of America. [6][7] It is now widely accepted that Colvin was not accredited by civil rights campaigners at the time due to her circumstances. ", Some in Montgomery, particularly in King Hill, think the decision was informed by snobbery. [26], Together with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanetta Reese, Colvin was one of the five plaintiffs in the court case of Browder v. Gayle. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. Joseph Rembert said, "If nobody did anything for Claudette Colvin in the past why don't we do something for her right now?" Jeanetta Reese later resigned from the case. "I didn't know if they were crazy, if they were going to take me to a Klan meeting. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window," she says. She sat down in the front of the bus and refused to move on her own will when asked. It was going to be a long night on Dixie Drive. But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. "However, the black leadership in Montgomery at the time thought that we should wait. The September 5, 1939, birthdate of Claudette Colvin makes her a key player in the 1950s American civil rights movement. ", 'Facts speak only when the historian calls on them," wrote the historian EH Carr in his landmark work, What Is History? The court declared her a ward of the state and remanded her to the custody of her family. "But according to [the commissioner], she was the first person ever to enter a plea of not guilty to such a charge.". 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. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. But, unlike Parks, Colvin never made it into the civil rights hall of fame. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. 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. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. ", When the boycott was over and the African-American community had emerged victorious, King, Nixon and Parks appeared for the cameras. Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a retired American nurse aide who was a pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement. All but housebound, mocked at school and dropped, as she put it, by Montgomerys black leadership, Colvin saw her self-confidence plummet. ", She believes that, if her pregnancy had been the only issue, they would have found a way to overcome it. Claudette Colvin's birth flower is Aster/Myosotis. Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist of African descent. Gary Younge investigates, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. [16] On March 2, 1955, she was returning home from school. "New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama. "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." "When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. "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. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). Ms. Colvin in New York on Feb. 5, 2009. And, like the pregnant Mrs Hamilton, many African-Americans refused to tolerate the indignity of the South's racist laws in silence. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. Colvin went to her job instead. Rosa Parks was neither a victim nor a saint, but a long-standing political activist and feminist. One incident in particular preoccupied her at the time - the plight of her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves. 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. I felt the hand of Harriet Tubman pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth pushing down on the other. I was sitting on the last seat that they said you could sit in. In his Pulitzer prize-winning account of the civil rights years, Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch wrote: "Even if Montgomery Negroes were willing to rally behind an unwed, pregnant teenager - which they were not - her circumstances would make her an extremely vulnerable standard bearer. Anything to detach herself from the horror of reality. "[33] "I'm not disappointed. How encouraging it would be if more adults had your courage, self-respect and integrity. When Colvin moved to New York many years later to become a nurse, she didn't tell many people about the part she played in the civil rights movement. She works the night shift and sleeps "when the sleep falls on her" during the day. Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. Claudette Colvin, 81, was a true pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement. In 2016, the Smithsonian Institution and its National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) were challenged by Colvin and her family, who asked that Colvin be given a more prominent mention in the history of the civil rights movement. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. I was glad that an adult had finally stood up to the system, but I felt left out.. She says she expected some abuse from the driver, but nothing more. 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. Parks stayed put. [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. We used to have a lot of juke joints up there, and maybe men would drink too much and get into a fight. But it is also a rare and excellent one that gives her more than a passing, dismissive mention. Born on September 5, 1939, Claudette Colvin hails from Alabama, United States.
raymond colvin son of claudette colvin