", 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. [4] Colvin later said: "My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. Men instructed their wives to walk or to share rides in neighbour's autos.". 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. BBC World Service. [49], The Little-Known Heroes: Claudette Colvin, a children's picture book by Kaushay and Spencer Ford, was published in 2021. I was sitting on the last seat that they said you could sit in. Two police officers arrived and pulled her from her seat. "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. As in 2023, Claudette Colvin's age is 83 years. Montgomery was not home to the first bus boycott any more than Colvin was the first person to challenge segregation. [50], In 2022, a biopic of Colvin titled Spark written by Niceole R. Levy and directed by Anthony Mackie was announced. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, at the age of 15, for refusing to give up her seat on a crowded, segregated bus to a white woman. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. 83 Year Old #3. 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. And, from there, the short distance to sanctity: they called her "Saint Rosa", "an angel walking", "a heaven-sent messenger". Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. 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. How encouraging it would be if more adults had your courage, self-respect and integrity. [6][7] It is now widely accepted that Colvin was not accredited by civil rights campaigners at the time due to her circumstances. A memorial service will be held at 11:00 AM, Saturday, March 4, 2023, at East Juliette . But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. [4][18] Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. In the 2010s, Larkin arranged for a street to be named after Colvin. "They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance. The case, organized and filed in federal court by civil rights attorney Fred Gray, challenged city bus segregation in Montgomery as unconstitutional. Raymond Colvin, age 62, a resident of Ft. Deposit, AL, died April 13, 2013. "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.". I was glad that an adult had finally stood up to the system, but I felt left out.. Now 76 and retired, Colvin deserves her place in history. "Move y'all, I want those two seats," he yelled. She became quiet and withdrawn. Nonetheless, Raymond died at the age of 37, reported Core Online. To sustain the boycott, communities organised carpools and the Montgomery's African-American taxi drivers charged only 10 cents - the same price as bus fare - for fellow African Americans. CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST, 81, BIRMINGHAM, AL. Colvin. "There was no assault", Price said. ", Nonetheless, the shock waves of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond. [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. 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. Going to a segregated school had one advantage, she found - her teachers gave her a good grounding in black history. But people in King Hill do not remember Colvin as that type of girl, and the accusation irritates Colvin to this day. The driver looked at the women in his mirror. King Hill, Montgomery, is the sepia South. She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move. "The news travelled fast," wrote Robinson. 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 shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed the District Court decision on November 13, 1956. I started protecting my crotch. I say it felt as though Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth's hands were pushing me down on the other shoulder. And I just kept blabbing things out, and I never stopped. "They did think I was nutty and crazy.". Rosa Parks stated: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. 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. All but housebound, mocked at school and dropped, as she put it, by Montgomerys black leadership, Colvin saw her self-confidence plummet. The organisation didn't want a teenager in the role, she says. She and her son Raymond moved in with Velma while Colvin looked for work. 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. 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. Colvin says that after Supreme Court made its decision, things slowly began to change. As more white passengers got on, the driver asked black people to give up their seats. "When I told my mother I was pregnant, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. 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. 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. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. They felt she had the maturity to handle being at the center of potential controversy. 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. If I had told my father who did it, he would have killed him. Soon afterwards, on 5 December, 40,000 African-American bus passengers boycotted the system and that afternoon, black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), electing a young pastor, Martin Luther King Jr, as their president. She was detained on March 2, 1955, in . For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. [30], Colvin was a predecessor to the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 1955, which gained national attention. Most Americans, even in Montgomery, have never heard of her. 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. [17][18][6] This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. The United States District Court ruled the state of Alabama and Montgomery's bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. 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.". An ad hoc committee headed by the most prominent local black activist, ED Nixon, was set up to discuss the possibility of making Colvin's arrest a test case. ", If that were not enough, the son, Raymond, to whom she would give birth in December, emerged light-skinned: "He came out looking kind of yellow, and then I was ostracised because I wouldn't say who the father was and they thought it was a white man. It was going to be a long night on Dixie Drive. She sat in the colored section about two seats away from an emergency exit, in a Capitol Heights bus. They forced her into the back of a squad car, one officer jumping in after her. Colvin has retired from her job and has been living her life. It is a letter Colvin knew nothing about. ", "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day," said Rosa Parks. He contacted Montgomery Councilmen Charles Jinright and Tracy Larkin, and in 2017, the Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. After her arrest and late appearance in the court hearing, she was more or less forgotten. Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist of African descent. "It is he who decides which facts to give the floor and in what order or context. But it is also a rare and excellent one that gives her more than a passing, dismissive mention. When Austin abandoned the family, Gadson was unable to financially support her children. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. She has literally become a footnote in history. 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. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail," she says. "Always studying and using long words.". The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of college. This made her very scared that they would sexually assault her because this happened frequently. Another cracked a joke about her bra size. [2] Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. In high school, she had high ambitions of political activity. "[38], Colvin's role has not gone completely unrecognized. 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. 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