Austin, but she was raised by her great-aunt and great-uncle, Mary Ann and Q.P. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home would be attacked. [24], Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. Colvin gave birth to her first son Raymond Jun 5, 1956. [39] Later, Rev. State and local officials appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. [citation needed]. To the exclusively male and predominantly middle-class, church-dominated, local black leadership in Montgomery, she was a fallen woman. Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist of African descent. But what I do remember is when they asked me to stick my arms out the window and that's when they handcuffed me," Colvin says. "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. "She was a bookworm," says Gloria Hardin, who went to school with Colvin and who still lives in King Hill. Second, she was the first person, in Montgomery at least, to take up the challenge. This movement took place in the United States. [28] Colvin stated she was branded a troublemaker by many in her community. 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. "I make up stories to convince them to stay in bed." In 1955, at age 15, Claudette Colvin . A 15-year-old high school student at the time, Colvin got fed up and refused to move even before Parks. She withdrew from college, and struggled in the local environment. She says she expected some abuse from the driver, but nothing more. 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. "She had been tracked down by the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times." In 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond. ", "I wanted to go north and liberate my people," explains Colvin. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman. As civil rights attorney Fred Gray put it, Claudette gave all of us moral courage. "She ain't got to do nothing but stay black and die," retorted a black passenger. "I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on. None of them spoke to me; they didn't see if I was okay. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. 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. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. They just didn't want to know me. Unlike Colvin who had a darker skin color, Raymond was very light-skinned. Colvin has retired from her job and has been living her life. Officers were called to the scene and Colvin was forcefully taken off of the bus and . 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. Then, they will reflect on a time when they took a stand on an important issue. ", 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 wasn't with it at all. In July 2014, Claudette Colvin's story was documented in a television episode of Drunk History (Montgomery, AL (Season 2, Episode 1)). She retired in 2004. Her pastor was called and came to pick her up. .css-m6thd4{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;display:block;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;font-family:Gilroy,Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;color:#323232;text-transform:capitalize;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-m6thd4:hover{color:link-hover;}}How the Greensboro Four Began the Sit-In Movement, Biography: You Need to Know: Bayard Rustin, Biography: You Need to Know: Sylvia Rivera, Biography: You Need to Know: Dorothy Pittman Hughes, 10 Influential Asian American and Pacific Islander Activists. 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, 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 was glued to my seat. 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. However, some white passengers still refused to sit near a black person. Just as her case was beginning to catch the nation's imagination, she became pregnant. Check below for more deets about Claudette Colvin. Broken-down cars sit outside tumble-down houses. 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. "So did the teachers, too. 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. It was her individual courage that triggered the collective display of defiance that turned a previously unknown 26-year-old preacher, Martin Luther King, into a household name. Colvin could not attend the proclamation due to health concerns. The three other girls got up; Colvin stayed put. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack, aged 37. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' Her parents were Mary Jane Gadson and C.P. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). [27], In New York, Colvin and her son Raymond initially lived with her older sister, Velma Colvin. "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. Rule and Guide: 100 ways to more Success for only $8.67 Colvin was a predecessor to the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 1955, which gained national attention. The baby was fair-skinned just like his dad and people accused her of having a white baby. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. She concentrated her mind on things she had been learning at school. 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". Sikora telephoned a startled Colvin and wrote an article about her. Colvin left Montgomery for New York City in 1958,[6] because she had difficulty finding and keeping work following her participation in the federal court case that overturned bus segregation. The death news of Colvin, which has been going on the Internet, is untrue; she is alive and is 83. 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. She shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated. 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 But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. He was . Her rhythm is simple and lifestyle frugal. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot and take it to the store". Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. The problem arose because all the seats on the bus were taken. "If any of you are not gentlemen enough to give a lady a seat, you should be put in jail yourself," he said. Meanwhile, Parks had been transformed from a politically-conscious activist to an upstanding, unfortunate Everywoman. Claudette Colvin (1935- ) Claudette Colvin, a nurse's aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, This page was last edited on 1 March 2023, at 23:25. he asked. For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. After training, she landed a job as a nurses aide in a Catholic hospital in Manhattan. Jeanetta Reese later resigned from the case. '", The atmosphere on the bus became very tense. 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. In the 2010s, Larkin arranged for a street to be named after Colvin. 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. "I was more defiant and then they knocked my books out of my lap and one of them grabbed my arm. The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of college. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn't like themselves. "We had unpaved streets and outside toilets. "They just dropped me. After her refusal to give up her seat, Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city's segregation laws. She now works as a nurses' aide at an old people's home in downtown Manhattan. 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. Rembert said, "I know people have heard her name before, but I just thought we should have a day to celebrate her." "We just sat there and waited for it all to happen," says Gloria Hardin, who was on the bus, too. ", 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. 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. [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". 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. She refused to give up her seat on a bus months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. 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. 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. But attorney Gray found it all but impossible to find riders who would potentially risk their lives by attaching their names as plaintiffs. ", When the boycott was over and the African-American community had emerged victorious, King, Nixon and Parks appeared for the cameras. Colvins feisty testimony was instrumental in the shocking success of the suit, which ended segregated seating on Montgomerys buses. [46], Young adult book Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip Hoose, was published in 2009 and won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. 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. We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,contact us! "I was scared and it was really, really frightening, it was like those Western movies where they put the bandit in the jail cell and you could hear the keys. Colvin has remained unmarried all her life. She was fingerprinted, denied a phone call and locked into a cell. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack at age 37. Nixon referred to her as a "lovely, stupid woman"; ministers would greet her at church functions, with irony, "Well, if it isn't the superstar." [2] Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. Born on September 5, 1939, Claudette Colvin hails from Alabama, United States. It is a rare, and poor, civil rights book that covers the Montgomery bus boycott and does not mention Claudette Colvin. Two more kicks soon followed. In this small, elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches and watch an impoverished world go by. It was not your tired feet, but your strength of character and resolve that inspired us." 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 . Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. "Aren't you going to get up?" She was detained on March 2, 1955, in . 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. Two police officers arrived and pulled her from her seat. "Middle-class blacks looked down on King Hill," says Colvin today. "Oh God," wailed one black woman at the back. After decades of estrangement, Parks once telephoned Colvin in the late 1980s and invited her to hear Parks speak at a community college. For months, Montgomerys NAACP chapter had been looking for a court case to test the constitutionality of the bus laws. She sat in the colored section about two seats away from an emergency exit, in a Capitol Heights bus. Your IP: They forced her into the back of a squad car, one officer jumping in after her. Respectfully and faithfully yours. "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. In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming majority of leaders. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. [47], A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. Listen to Claudette Colvin's interview on Outlook on the BBC World Service. You can't sugarcoat it. Four years later, they executed him. In high school, she had high ambitions of political activity. "[33] "I'm not disappointed. "Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming . [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. 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. Fifty years have passed since campaigners overturned a ban on ethnic minorities working on buses in one British city. Reeves was a teenage grocery delivery boy who was found having sex with a white woman. "You may do that," said Parks, who is now 87 and lives in Detroit. "I never swore when I was young," she says. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939)[1][2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. But also let them know that the attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation. She relied on the city's buses to get to and from school because her family did not own a car. ", 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. March 2 was named Claudette Colvin Day in Montgomery. 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. Martin Luther King Jr., had been seeking to stir the outrage of African Americans and sympathetic whites into civic action. [2] She was also a member of the NAACP Youth Council, where she formed a close relationship with her mentor, Rosa Parks. 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. [30], Colvin was a predecessor to the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 1955, which gained national attention. Claudette Colvin and her guardians relocated to Montgomery when . [4][18] Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. "I wasn't frightened but disappointed and angry because I knew I was sitting in the right seat.". Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a retired American nurse aide who was a pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement. I felt the hand of Harriet Tubman pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth pushing down on the other. 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). So, Colvin and her younger sister, Delphine, were taken in by their great aunt and uncle, Mary Anne and Q. P. Colvin whose daughter, Velma Colvin, had already moved out. Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. 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. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. Like Colvin, Parks was commuting home and was seated in the "coloured section" of the bus. But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in the first federal court case filed by civil rights attorney Fred Gray on February 1, 1956, as Browder v. Gayle, to challenge bus segregation in the city. Best Known For: Claudette Colvin is an activist who was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s. [27] During the court case, Colvin described her arrest: "I kept saying, 'He has no civil right this is my constitutional right you have no right to do this.' It is this that incenses Patton. "She lived in a little shack. [24] She was convicted on all three charges in juvenile court. He was drug-addicted and alcoholic and passed away of a cardiac attack in Colvin's apartment. [4] Colvin later said: "My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. "[20], Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. "She had been yelling, 'It's my constitutional right!'. 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. They would have come and seen my parents and found me someone to marry. Blake approached her. She appreciated, but never embraced, King's strategy of nonviolent resistance, remains a keen supporter of Malcolm X and was constantly frustrated by sexism in the movement. She has literally become a footnote in history. "She was not the first person to be arrested for violation of the bus seating ordinance," said J Mills Thornton, an author and academic. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. American civil rights pioneer and former nurse's aide Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939. image credit; BBC. Nonetheless, Raymond died at the age of 37, reported Core Online. This led to a few articles and profiles by others in subsequent years. He was executed for his alleged crimes. She was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested by the two policemen, Thomas J. The bus froze. "When ED Nixon and the Women's Political Council of Montgomery recognised that you could be that hero, you met the challenge and changed our lives forever. 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