Ms. Colvin in New York on Feb. 5, 2009. In 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond. "We just sat there and waited for it all to happen," says Gloria Hardin, who was on the bus, too. 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. One incident in particular preoccupied her at the time - the plight of her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves. "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. But, unlike Parks, Colvin never made it into the civil rights hall of fame. On the night of Parks' arrest, the Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system. Gary Younge investigates, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to. A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr., was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner. Claudette had two sons named Raymond and Randy Colvin, and her first pregnancy was at the age of 16 with a much older man. "However, the black leadership in Montgomery at the time thought that we should wait. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. The young Ms. Colvin was portrayed by actress Mariah Iman Wilson. "[37], In 2000, Troy State University opened a Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery to honor the town's place in civil rights history. She retired in 2004. [37], "All we want is the truth, why does history fail to get it right?" As well as the predictable teenage fantasy of "marrying a baseball player", she also had strong political convictions. [2] She was also a member of the NAACP Youth Council, where she formed a close relationship with her mentor, Rosa Parks. 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. Moreover, she was not the first person to take a stand by keeping her seat and challenging the system. American civil rights pioneer and former nurse's aide Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939. image credit; BBC. 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 Colvin says that after Supreme Court made its decision, things slowly began to change. It was an exchange later credited with changing the racial landscape of America. 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. It is time for President Obama to. Roy White, who was in charge of most of the project, asked Colvin if she would like to appear in a video to tell her story, but Colvin refused. She became quiet and withdrawn. 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. The baby was fair-skinned just like his dad and people accused her of having a white baby. "They put him on death row." Colvin was not invited officially for the formal dedication of the museum, which opened to the public in September 2016. I can still vividly hear the click of those keys. None of them spoke to me; they didn't see if I was okay. 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. It was believed that a venomous snake would die if placed in a vessel made of sapphire. It is the historian who has decided for his own reasons that Caesar's crossing of that petty stream, the Rubicon, is a fact of history, whereas the crossing of the Rubicon by millions of other people before or since interests nobody at all.". ", 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. Another factor was that before long Colvin became pregnant. [2] Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. Blake persisted. "For a while, there was a real distance between me and Mrs Parks over this. "If any of you are not gentlemen enough to give a lady a seat, you should be put in jail yourself," he said. 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.. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. 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 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.". Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. In July 2014, Claudette Colvin's story was documented in a television episode of Drunk History (Montgomery, AL (Season 2, Episode 1)). You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. She was detained on March 2, 1955, in . They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."[6][8]. Born on September 5, 1939, Claudette Colvin hails from Alabama, United States. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. Broken-down cars sit outside tumble-down houses. She said, "They've already called it the Rosa Parks museum, so they've already made up their minds what the story is. Betty Shabbaz, the widow of Malcolm X, was one of them. 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. "So I told him I was not going to get up, either. "Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom.". Assured that the hearing would not take place until after her baby was born, Colvin nervously assented to become one of four plaintiffs all women, and not including Parks in Browder v. Gayle. ", She believes that, if her pregnancy had been the only issue, they would have found a way to overcome it. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot and take it to the store". [2][10] When Colvin was eight years old, the Colvins moved to King Hill, a poor black neighborhood in Montgomery where she spent the rest of her childhood. "We didn't know what was going to happen, but we knew something would happen. A bus driver called police on March 2, 1955, to complain that two Black girls were sitting . Most of the people didn't have problems with us sitting on the bus, most New Yorkers cared about economic problems. [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. 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. "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. 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. She was played by Mariah Iman Wilson. Those who are aware of these distortions in the civil rights story are few. "[4][5] Colvin's case was dropped by civil rights campaigners because Colvin was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings. But somewhere en route they mislaid the truth. "She had been yelling, 'It's my constitutional right!'. It wasn't a bad area, but it had a reputation." [2][14] Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. ", 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. She retired in 2004. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. ", The upshot was that Colvin was left in an incredibly vulnerable position. 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 . Respectfully and faithfully yours. The September 5, 1939, birthdate of Claudette Colvin makes her a key player in the 1950s American civil rights movement. He went back to Colvin, now seven months pregnant. I started protecting my crotch. he asked. Colvin's sister, Gloria Laster, said. I heard about the court decision on the news, Colvin recalled. . In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming . This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. [28], The Montgomery bus boycott was able to unify the people of Montgomery, regardless of educational background or class. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. She spent the next decade going back and forth like a yo-yo between the two cities, she said. Colvin never married but gave birth to two sons, the first was Raymond Colvin (b. December 1955, died 1993). "Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' 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. "But according to [the commissioner], she was the first person ever to enter a plea of not guilty to such a charge.". 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. 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. 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. 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. Second, she was the first person, in Montgomery at least, to take up the challenge. Taylor Branch. "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. Parks stayed put. [36], Colvin and her family have been fighting for recognition for her action. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. 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. The urban bustle surrounding her could not seem further away from King Hill. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. 2023 BBC. . He was executed for his alleged crimes. She and her son Raymond moved in with Velma while Colvin looked for work. By then I didnt have much time for celebrating anyway. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. "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. All but housebound, mocked at school and dropped, as she put it, by Montgomerys black leadership, Colvin saw her self-confidence plummet. Tour: Black America and the burden of the perfect victim. I was glued to my seat. "I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history? 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. He was so light-skinned (like his father) that people frequently said she had a baby by a white man. Born in Alabama #33. She needed support. She was born on September 5, 1939. The United States District Court ruled the state of Alabama and Montgomery's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. Clubs called special meetings and discussed the event with some degree of alarm. Phillip Hoose also wrote about her in the young adult biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). [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. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. "What's going on with these niggers?" I was crying," she says. Black people were allowed to occupy those seats so long as white people didn't need them. Claudette Colvin's birthstone is Sapphire. As in 2023, Claudette Colvin's age is 83 years. 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