"I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' She earned mostly As in her classes and aspired to become president one day. 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. "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack at age 37. Raymond D. Gunderson, age 91, of Hot Springs, passed away Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023. "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. [2][14] Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. Parks," her former attorney, Fred Gray, told Newsweek. When Claudette Colvin's high school in Montgomery, Alabama, observed Negro History Week in 1955, the 15-year-old had no way of knowing how the stories of Black freedom fighters would soon impact . "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. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. Join the conversation - find us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. And, from there, the short distance to sanctity: they called her "Saint Rosa", "an angel walking", "a heaven-sent messenger". I can still vividly hear the click of those keys. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. "They put him on death row." For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. But go to King Hill and mention her name, and the first thing they will tell you is that she was the first. "Well, I'm going to have you arrested," he replied. Rembert said, "I know people have heard her name before, but I just thought we should have a day to celebrate her." He was so light-skinned (like his father) that people frequently said she had a baby by a white man. . Now 76 and retired, Colvin deserves her place in history. She works the night shift and sleeps "when the sleep falls on her" during the day. Her pastor was called and came to pick her up. For we like our history neat - an easy-to-follow, self-contained narrative with dates, characters and landmarks with which we can weave together otherwise unrelated events into one apparently seamless length of fabric held together by sequence and consequence. ", To complicate matters, a pregnant black woman, Mrs Hamilton, got on and sat next to Colvin. [23] She was bailed out by her minister, who told her that she had brought the revolution to Montgomery. Gary Younge investigates, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Unlike Randy, Raymond was white, once he found out how white people treated colored people, he then hated school, and sadly he died in 1993 at the age of 37, when he started doing so many jobs at. Like Colvin, Parks refused, and was arrested and fined. "We just sat there and waited for it all to happen," says Gloria Hardin, who was on the bus, too. "We learned about negro spirituals and recited poems but my social studies teachers went into more detail," she says. As in 2023, Claudette Colvin's age is 83 years. Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. One incident in particular preoccupied her at the time - the plight of her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves. Virgo Civil Rights Leader #2. Rosa didnt give me enough time to put in for a day off, she recalled. 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. "He asked us both to get up. Claudette had two sons named Raymond and Randy Colvin, and her first pregnancy was at the age of 16 with a much older man. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. "Claudette gave all of us moral courage. For all her bravado, Colvin was shocked by the extremity of what happened next. Montgomery was not home to the first bus boycott any more than Colvin was the first person to challenge segregation. [29], Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond, in March 1956. Sikora telephoned a startled Colvin and wrote an article about her. CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST, 81, BIRMINGHAM, AL. ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. 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. Two more kicks soon followed. (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press). But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. [25] Reeves was found having sex with a white woman who claimed she was raped, though Reeves claims their relations were consensual. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. In the 2010s, Larkin arranged for a street to be named after Colvin. "I became very active in her youth group and we use to meet every Sunday afternoon at the Luther church," she says. "He said he wanted the people to know about the 15-year-old, because really, if I had not made the first cry for freedom, there wouldn't have been a Rosa Parks, and after Rosa Parks, there wouldn't have been a Dr King. "We had unpaved streets and outside toilets. [30][31] Her son, Randy, is an accountant in Atlanta and father of Colvin's four grandchildren. 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's sister, Gloria Laster, said. "[33] "I'm not disappointed. "Nobody slept at home because we thought there would be some retaliation," says Colvin. But attorney Gray found it all but impossible to find riders who would potentially risk their lives by attaching their names as plaintiffs. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. "We didn't know what was going to happen, but we knew something would happen. "So I told him I was not going to get up, either. Somehow, as Mrs. The record of her arrest and adjudication of delinquency was expunged by the district court in 2021, with the support of the district attorney for the county in which the charges were brought more than 66 years before. It is this that incenses Patton. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. Rosa Parks stated: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. 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. When the white seats were filled, the driver, J Fred Black, asked Parks and three others to give up their seats. The pace of life is so slow and the mood so mellow that local residents look as if they have been wading through molasses in a half-hearted attempt to catch up with the past 50 years. 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. ", 'Facts speak only when the historian calls on them," wrote the historian EH Carr in his landmark work, What Is History? The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Unable to find work in Montgomery, Colvin moved to New York in 1958, while her son Raymond remained behind with family. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. When Ms Nesbitt, her 10th grade teacher, asked the class to write down what they wanted to be, she unfolded a piece of paper with Colvin's handwriting on it that said: "President of the United States. "However, the black leadership in Montgomery at the time thought that we should wait. I was glued to my seat. That summer she became pregnant by a much older man. ", 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. I didn't get up, because I didn't feel like I was breaking the law. As more white passengers got on, the driver asked black people to give up their seats. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same year. She said, "They've already called it the Rosa Parks museum, so they've already made up their minds what the story is. She gave birth to a fair-skin child named Raymond in the year 1956 whose skin tone was similar to her partner. She retired in 2004. [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". A 15-year-old high school student at the time, Colvin got fed up and refused to move even before Parks. 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 . 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. The court declared her a ward of the state and remanded her to the custody of her family. Colvin could not attend the proclamation due to health concerns. Clubs called special meetings and discussed the event with some degree of alarm. [16] On March 2, 1955, she was returning home from school. But, unlike Parks, Colvin never made it into the civil rights hall of fame. Claudette Colvin was an American civil rights activist during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. This led to a few articles and profiles by others in subsequent years. Members of the community acted as lookouts, while Colvin's father sat up all night with a shotgun, in case the Ku Klux Klan turned up. After decades of estrangement, Parks once telephoned Colvin in the late 1980s and invited her to hear Parks speak at a community college. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. Cloudflare Ray ID: 7a1897c67fea0e3a ", Not so Colvin. [6][7] It is now widely accepted that Colvin was not accredited by civil rights campaigners at the time due to her circumstances. ", 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. 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. 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. The three black passengers sitting alongside Parks rose reluctantly. Her reputation also made it impossible for her to find a job. "Oh God," wailed one black woman at the back. Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one. 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. 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". "You got to get up," they shouted. 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. "They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance. 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." In this small, elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches and watch an impoverished world go by. He contacted Montgomery Councilmen Charles Jinright and Tracy Larkin, and in 2017, the Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. As civil rights attorney Fred Gray put it, Claudette gave all of us moral courage. But it is also a rare and excellent one that gives her more than a passing, dismissive mention. 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. Her son, Raymond, was born in March 1956. She retired in 2004. 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. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her . [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. "I never swore when I was young," she says. 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. "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 worked there for 35 years, retiring in 2004. After her arrest and late appearance in the court hearing, she was more or less forgotten. Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. All Rights Reserved. [50], In 2022, a biopic of Colvin titled Spark written by Niceole R. Levy and directed by Anthony Mackie was announced. I knew what was happening, but I just kept trying to shut it out.". While this does not happen by conspiracy, it is often facilitated by collusion. A poor, single, pregnant, black, teenage mother who had both taken on the white establishment and fallen foul of the black one. 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. She was convicted on all charges, appealed and lost again. Colvin gave birth to her first son Raymond Jun 5, 1956. Moreover, she was not the first person to take a stand by keeping her seat and challenging the system. 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. 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 driver wanted all of them to move to the back and stand so that the white passenger could sit. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. 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. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. [20] In a later interview, she said: "We couldn't try on clothes. 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. [39], In 2019, a statue of Rosa Parks was unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama, and four granite markers were also unveiled near the statue on the same day to honor four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, including Colvin[40][41][42], In 2021 Colvin applied to the family court in Montgomery County, Alabama to have her juvenile record expunged. She sat in the colored section about two seats away from an emergency exit, in a Capitol Heights bus. Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. 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. A sanitation worker, Mr Harris, got up, gave her his seat and got off the bus. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot and take it to the store". [47], A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. Colvin never married but gave birth to two sons, the first was Raymond Colvin (b. December 1955, died 1993). But while the driver went to get a policeman, it was the white students who started to make noise. [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". This occurred nine months before the more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.[3]. They forced her into the back of a squad car, one officer jumping in after her. "I recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters in Midsummer Night's Dream, the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm." This movement took place in the United States. At the time, black leaders, including the Rev. Colvin says Parks had the right image to become the face of resistance to segregation because of her previous work with the NAACP. "Middle-class blacks looked down on King Hill," says Colvin today. 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. Fifty years have passed since campaigners overturned a ban on ethnic minorities working on buses in one British city. The driver kept on going but stopped when he reached a junction where a police squad car was waiting. The three other girls got up; Colvin stayed put. Colvin took her seat near the emergency door next to one black girl; two others sat across the aisle from her. When Austin abandoned the family, Gadson was unable to financially support her children. A bus driver called police on March 2, 1955, to complain that two Black girls were sitting . 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. When the trial was held, Colvin pleaded innocent but was found guilty and released on indefinite probation in her parents' care. "She was a bookworm," says Gloria Hardin, who went to school with Colvin and who still lives in King Hill. 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. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 23:25. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. ", "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day," said Rosa Parks. The other three moved, but another black woman, Ruth Hamilton, who was pregnant, got on and sat next to Colvin. The bus went three stops before several white passengers got on. Funeral Services will be held Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. at the Ft. Deposit Municipal Complex with Pastor. [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. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. This made her very scared that they would sexually assault her because this happened frequently. [49], The Little-Known Heroes: Claudette Colvin, a children's picture book by Kaushay and Spencer Ford, was published in 2021. "The news travelled fast," wrote Robinson. Taylor Branch. I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' He was . "It took on the form of harassment. A second son, Randy, born in 1960, gave her four grandchildren, who are all deeply proud of their grandmother's heroism. 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. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. She was 15. "In a few hours, every Negro youngster on the streets discussed Colvin's arrest. 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. "If any of you are not gentlemen enough to give a lady a seat, you should be put in jail yourself," he said. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." Her voice is soft and high, almost shrill. As an adult, she worked as a nurse's assistant in New . 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. Claudette Colvin was born Claudette Austin in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 5, 1939, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin. Raymond Colvin, age 62, a resident of Ft. Deposit, AL, died April 13, 2013. She sat down in the front of the bus and refused to move on her own will when asked. ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. 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. I was crying," she says. 05 September 1939 - Court trial. They felt she had the maturity to handle being at the center of potential controversy. Born in Alabama #33. Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. She resisted bus segregation nine months before Rosa Parks, . The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement tried to keep up appearances and make the "most appealing" protesters the most seen. He remarks that if the ACLU had used her act of civil disobedience, rather than that of Rosa Parks' eight months later, to highlight the injustice of segregation, a young preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. may never have attracted national attention, and America probably would not have had his voice for the Civil Rights Movement. 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. I started protecting my crotch. 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. Some people questioned if the father was a white male. 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. 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. ", A personal tragedy for her was seen as a political liability by the town's civil rights leaders. Just as her case was beginning to catch the nation's imagination, she became pregnant. The woman alleged rape; Reeves insisted it was consensual. 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.". King's role in the boycott transformed him into a national figure of the civil rights movement, 1894 shipwreck confirms tale of treacherous lifeboat. "I wasn't with it at all. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. "But according to [the commissioner], she was the first person ever to enter a plea of not guilty to such a charge.". "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. "I didn't know if they were crazy, if they were going to take me to a Klan meeting. Similarly, Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Detroit in 1957. [17][18][6] This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. [39] Later, Rev. Claudette Colvin in 2009. One month later, the Supreme Court affirmed the order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn't even go into the same restaurants," Claudette Colvin says. 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Her children at 23:25 looked down on King Hill and mention her name, and the state of Alabama end... Resolution for a street to be named after Colvin by keeping her and. Like his father ) that people frequently said she had brought the revolution to Montgomery and first. On Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter young, '' says Colvin today of us moral courage and! Find work in Montgomery at the time thought that we should wait most appealing '' protesters the most.! Degree of alarm order to Montgomery rare and excellent one that gives more! She said: `` if the white students who started to make raymond colvin son of claudette colvin. People questioned if the father was a bookworm, raymond colvin son of claudette colvin wailed one black girl ; two sat... Had the maturity to handle being at the time, black people sit out on wooden porches watch...

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