Daryl Bailey, the District Attorney for the county, supported her motion, stating: "Her actions back in March of 1955 were conscientious, not criminal; inspired, not illegal; they should have led to praise and not prosecution". If I had told my father who did it, he would have killed him. Meanwhile, Parks had been transformed from a politically-conscious activist to an upstanding, unfortunate Everywoman. American civil rights pioneer and former nurse's aide Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939. image credit; BBC. She deserves our attention, our gratitude and a warm, bright spotlight all her own. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman.'" Nonetheless, Raymond died at the age of 37, reported Core Online. She shops with her workmates and watches action movies on video. Her political inclination was fueled in part by an incident with her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves; his case was the first time that she had witnessed the work of the NAACP. [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 do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on. Nor was Colvin the last to be passed over. 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. Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. So, you know, I think you compare history, likemost historians say Columbus discovered America, and it was already populated. 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. "If it had been for an old lady, I would have got up, but it wasn't. Claudette Colvin became a teenage mother in 1956 when she gave birth to a boy named Raymond. Colvin was initially charged with disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and battering and assaulting a police officer. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. Parks was, too. The other three moved, but another black woman, Ruth Hamilton, who was pregnant, got on and sat next to Colvin. . 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. Claudette Colvin was the first person arrested by the police in Montgomery, AL for refusing to give up her bus 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. In high school, she had high ambitions of political activity. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. [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. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. State and local officials appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Colvin in New York on Feb. 5, 2009. [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. Two more kicks soon followed. 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. The full enormity of what she had done was only just beginning to dawn on her. "So I told him I was not going to get up, either. I was thinking, Hey, I did that months ago, Colvin recalled. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). I was glued to my seat," she later told Newsweek. [4], "The bus was getting crowded, and I remember the bus driver looking through the rearview mirror asking her [Colvin] to get up for the white woman, which she didn't," said Annie Larkins Price, a classmate of Colvin. One month later, the Supreme Court affirmed the order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. She dreamed of becoming the President of the United States. "Always studying and using long words.". "Move y'all, I want those two seats," he yelled. Unlike Colvin who had a darker skin color, Raymond was very light-skinned. I think that history only has room enough for certainyou know, how many icons can you choose? 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. '", The atmosphere on the bus became very tense. [29], Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond, in March 1956. Parks," her former attorney, Fred Gray, told Newsweek. 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. In 1969, years after moving to NYC, she acquired a job working as a Nurse's aide at a Nursing home. "She was a victim of both the forces of history and the forces of destiny," said King, in a quote now displayed in the civil rights museum in Atlanta. 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. Like Colvin, Parks refused, and was arrested and fined. For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. [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. 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. "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. ", 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. The driver wanted all of them to move to the back and stand so that the white passenger could sit. "[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. [citation needed]. While her role in the fight to end segregation in Montgomery may not be widely recognized, Colvin helped advance civil rights efforts in the city. 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. I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' [51], National Museum of African American History and Culture, "Power Dynamics of a Segregated City: Class, Gender, and Claudette Colvin's Struggle for Equality", "Before Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin Stayed in Her Bus Seat", "From Footnote to Fame in Civil Rights History", "Before Rosa Parks, A Teenager Defied Segregation On An Alabama Bus", "Chapter 1 (excerpt): 'Up From Pine Level', "#ThrowbackThursday: The girl who acted before Rosa Parks", "Claudette Colvin: an unsung hero in the Montgomery Bus Boycott", "The Origins of the Montgomery Bus Boycott", "A Forgotten Contribution: Before Rosa Parks, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on the bus", "Claudette Colvin: First to keep her seat", "Claudette Colvin | Americans Who Tell The Truth", "Claudette Colvin: the woman who refused to give up her bus seat nine months before Rosa Parks", "2 other bus boycott heroes praise Parks' acclaim", "This once-forgotten civil rights hero deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom", "Chairman Crowley Honors Civil Rights Pioneer Claudette Colvin", "The Other Rosa Parks: Now 73, Claudette Colvin Was First to Refuse Giving Up Seat on Montgomery Bus", "Claudette Colvin Seeks Greater Recognition For Role In Making Civil Rights History", "Weekend: Civil rights heroine Claudette Colvin", "Claudette Colvin honored by Montgomery council", "Alabama unveils statue of civil rights icon Rosa Parks", "Rosa Parks statue unveiled in Alabama on anniversary of her refusal to give up seat", "She refused to move bus seats months before Rosa Parks. Parks stayed put. Second, she was the first person, in Montgomery at least, to take up the challenge. I can still vividly hear the click of those keys. 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. The United States District Court ruled the state of Alabama and Montgomery's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. "She was a bookworm," says Gloria Hardin, who went to school with Colvin and who still lives in King Hill. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. When a white woman who got on the bus was left standing in the front, the bus driver, Robert W. Cleere, commanded Colvin and three other black women in her row to move to the back. [28], The Montgomery bus boycott was able to unify the people of Montgomery, regardless of educational background or class. 9. The organisation didn't want a teenager in the role, she says. He went back to Colvin, now seven months pregnant. A year later, on 20 December 1956, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation on the buses must end. 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." A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmother's heroism. Colvin and her friends were sitting in a row a little more than half way down the bus - two were on the right side of the bus and two on the left - and a white passenger was standing in the aisle between them. It is time for President Obama to. "There was no assault", Price said. 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. They never came and discussed it with my parents. The young Ms. Colvin was portrayed by actress Mariah Iman Wilson. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn't like themselves. 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. 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 . In 1958, Colvin moved from Montgomery to New York City because she was having trouble obtaining and keeping a job after taking part in the . All Rights Reserved. Men instructed their wives to walk or to share rides in neighbour's autos.". [2][13] Not long after, in September 1952, Colvin started attending Booker T. Washington High School. However, her story is often silenced. After her minister paid her bail, she went home where she and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation. And, like the pregnant Mrs Hamilton, many African-Americans refused to tolerate the indignity of the South's racist laws in silence. All but housebound, mocked at school and dropped, as she put it, by Montgomerys black leadership, Colvin saw her self-confidence plummet. asked one. "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. But go to King Hill and mention her name, and the first thing they will tell you is that she was the first. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. "Never. Colvin was a member of the NAACP Youth Council and had been learning about the civil rights movement in school. He wasn't." She retired in 2004. Despite the light sentence, Colvin could not escape the court of public opinion. 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. She sat in the colored section about two seats away from an emergency exit, in a Capitol Heights bus. 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 has said, "Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all. During her pregnancy, she was abandoned by civil rights leaders. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn't even go into the same restaurants," Claudette Colvin says. Read about our approach to external linking. "We just sat there and waited for it all to happen," says Gloria Hardin, who was on the bus, too. It felt like Harriet Tubman was pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth was pushing me down on the other shoulder, she mused many years later. It 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. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."[6][8]. "In a few hours, every Negro youngster on the streets discussed Colvin's arrest. And that person, it transpired, would be Rosa Parks. The policeman arrived, displaying two of the characteristics for which white Southern men had become renowned: gentility and racism. 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. ", A personal tragedy for her was seen as a political liability by the town's civil rights leaders. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one. For Colvin, the entire episode was traumatic: "Nowadays, you'd call it statutory rape, but back then it was just the kind of thing that happened," she says, describing the conditions under which she conceived. Raymond D. Gunderson, age 91, of Hot Springs, passed away Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023. She was fingerprinted, denied a phone call and locked into a cell. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. Growing up in one of Montgomery's poorer neighborhoods, Colvin studied hard in school. Her son, Raymond, was born in March 1956. Like Colvin, Parks was commuting home and was seated in the "coloured section" of the bus. By Monday, the day the boycott began, Colvin had already been airbrushed from the official version of events. Your IP: ", Montgomery's black establishment leaders decided they would have to wait for the right person. The driver looked at the women in his mirror. [2] Colvin and her sister referred to the Colvins as their parents and took their last name. "Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' BBC World Service. [16] Referring to the segregation on the bus and the white woman: "She couldn't sit in the same row as us because that would mean we were as good as her". Colvin was a kid. "We had unpaved streets and outside toilets. She resisted bus segregation nine months before Rosa Parks, . Blake approached her. "I waited for about three hours until my mother arrived with my pastor to bail me out. The baby was fair-skinned just like his dad and people accused her of having a white baby. The bus froze. She spent the next decade going back and forth like a yo-yo between the two cities, she said. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. In 2009, the writer Phillip Hoose published a book that told her story in detail for the first time. They felt she had the maturity to handle being at the center of potential controversy. "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." 83 Year Old #3. 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. Colvin says Parks had the right image to become the face of resistance to segregation because of her previous work with the NAACP. "New York is a completely different culture to Montgomery, Alabama. "Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom.". Her casting as the prim, ageing, guileless seamstress with her hair in a bun who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time denied her track record of militancy and feminism. But attorney Gray found it all but impossible to find riders who would potentially risk their lives by attaching their names as plaintiffs. ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. The bus went three stops before several white passengers got on. Complexity, with all its nuances and shaded realities, is a messy business. "Nobody slept at home because we thought there would be some retaliation," says Colvin. They remember her as a confident, studious, young girl with a streak that was rebellious without being boisterous. In New York, Colvin gave birth to another son, Randy. I felt the hand of Harriet Tubman pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth pushing down on the other. You can't sugarcoat it. "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," says Colvin. Moreover, she was not the first person to take a stand by keeping her seat and challenging the system. First Name Claudette #1. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. 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 . I didn't want to discuss it with them," she says. "There was segregation everywhere. "They put him on death row." "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. asked the policeman. She herself didn't talk about it much, but she spoke recently to the BBC. "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," Colvin later said. [37], "All we want is the truth, why does history fail to get it right?" Austin, but she was raised by her great-aunt and great-uncle, Mary Ann and Q.P. I had been kicked out of school, and I had a 3-month-old baby.. She earned mostly As in her classes and aspired to become president one day. The boycott was very effective but the city still resisted complying with protesters' demands - an end to the policy preventing the hiring of black bus drivers and the introduction of first-come first-seated rule. The legal case turned on the testimony of four plaintiffs, one of whom was Claudette Colvin. They sent a delegation to see the commissioner, and after a few meetings they appeared to have reached an understanding that the harassment would stop and that Colvin would be allowed to clear her name. 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 . [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. He was born on March 3, 1931, in Mound City, S.D., the son of Alfred Gunderson and Verna Johnson Gunderson. Ward and Paul Headley. 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. [30] Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. 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. ", When the boycott was over and the African-American community had emerged victorious, King, Nixon and Parks appeared for the cameras. But somewhere en route they mislaid the truth. 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. As in 2023, Claudette Colvin's age is 83 years. "When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939)[1][2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. "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. In this respect, the civil rights movement in Montgomery moved fast. She turns, watches, wipes, feeds and washes the elderly patients and offers them a gentle, consoling word when they become disoriented. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. When the white seats were filled, the driver, J Fred Black, asked Parks and three others to give up their seats. In the 2010s, Larkin arranged for a street to be named after Colvin. He was . - Claudette Colvin On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Those who are aware of these distortions in the civil rights story are few. Claudette Colvin was an American civil rights activist during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. "The white people were always seated at the front of the bus and the black people were seated at the back of the bus. "I didn't know if they were crazy, if they were going to take me to a Klan meeting. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. [30], Colvin was a predecessor to the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 1955, which gained national attention. [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. She and her son Raymond moved in with Velma while Colvin looked for work. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmothers heroism. 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. To handle being at the women in his mirror she spent the next decade going and..., S.D., the US civil rights movement Core Online was shocked by the town 's civil rights.. All of them to Move to the United States District Court ruled the state of Alabama and &... 'If you are not going to get up, I thought she was not going to have chance! ; s age is 83 years had high ambitions of political activity will. Page, but it was n't they were crazy, if they were to. N'T even go into the same restaurants, '' her former attorney Fred! 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