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'''Claudette Colvin''' (born September 5, 1939) is a pioneer of the [[African |
'''Claudette Colvin''' (born September 5, 1939) is a pioneer of the [[African American]] [[civil rights]] movement. She spontaneously resisted [[Alabama]]n bus segregation preceding the better known [[Rosa Parks]] incident by nine months, but her case was not publicized for long by black leaders because of her image as a lower-class, [[Colorism|dark-skinned]],<ref name="Claud"/> unmarried pregnant woman. "her circumstances would make her an extremely vulnerable standard-bearer" <ref>ISBN 0671687425 p. 123 </ref> |
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==Biography== |
==Biography== |
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Revision as of 00:35, 1 April 2010
Claudette Colvin | |
|---|---|
 Claudette Colvin during a press conference on May 20, 2007 | |
| Born | September 5, 1939 |
| Occupation | civil rights activist |
Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a pioneer of the African American civil rights movement. She spontaneously resisted Alabaman bus segregation preceding the better known Rosa Parks incident by nine months, but her case was not publicized for long by black leaders because of her image as a lower-class, dark-skinned,[1] unmarried pregnant woman. "her circumstances would make her an extremely vulnerable standard-bearer" [2]
Biography
She hailed from Alabama, and in 1955, at the age of 15, she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white person, in violation of local law.[1] Her arrest preceded that of Rosa Parks' by nine months. In the months following the incident, Colvin became pregnant, thus making the NAACP question whether or not she was a "reputable" face for the civil rights cause.[citation needed]
Bus incident
In 1955 Colvin was a student at Booker T. Washington High School in Montgomery.[3] Colvin was returning from school on March 2, 1955 when she got on a Capital Heights bus downtown (at the same place Parks boarded another bus nine months later). Colvin's family did own a car, but she relied on the city's gold-and-green buses to get to school.[citation needed]
Colvin was sitting about two seats from the emergency exit when four hobos boarded. The bus driver, Robert W. Cleere, ordered her along with three other black passengers to get up. She refused and was removed from the bus by two police officers, who took her to prison.[4]
When she refused to get up, she was still thinking about a school paper that she had written that day. It was about the prohibition for black people to try on white clothes in department stores.[5]
"The bus was getting crowded and I remember the bus driver looking through the rear view mirror asking her to get up out of her seat, which she didn't," said a classmate at the time, Annie Larkins Price. "She didn't say anything. She just continued looking out the window. She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move."[6]
Colvin was handcuffed, arrested and forcibly removed from the bus. She shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated.[4]
"Price testified on Colvin's behalf in the juvenile court case, where Colvin was convicted of violating the segregation law and assault."[6] "There was no assault," Price said.[6]
Community response
Edgar Daniel Nixon, then a leader of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, had been waiting for a test case to challenge bus segregation and vowed to help Colvin after her father posted bail.[7] But then came the second-guessing: Colvin came from a very poor background where her father mowed lawns, her mother was a maid and they lived in King Hill, the poorest section of Montgomery. The police, who took her to the city hall and then jail, also accused the teenager of "spewing curse words", which Colvin denied, saying that in fact the obscenities were leveled at her.[7]
A number of black leaders, including Parks, raised money for Colvin's defense. At the time local black leaders believed that Colvin's case was an appropriate one to litigate all the way to the United States Supreme Court, as part of a broader effort to overturn segregation laws in the South.[citation needed] Colvin's lawyers wanted a new arrangement on the city's bus.[citation needed] Mainly, they wanted white people to take the front and black to take the back and the middle of the bus would be available to everyone. Therefore, they sent a petition to the bus company and to the city officials. To everyone's surprise, David Birmingham, a Police and Fire Commissioner, agreed to the petition. But the city bus company refused.[5]
Soon after her arrest, however, Colvin became pregnant by a much older, married man, having been raped (allegedly). Local black leaders felt that this was a moral transgression and would scandalize the deeply religious black community and make Colvin suspect in the eyes of sympathetic whites. In particular, they felt that the white press would manipulate Colvin's illegitimate pregnancy as a means of undermining Colvin's victim status and any subsequent boycott of the bus company. Rosa Parks stated that "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have had a field day. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance. So the decision was made to wait until we had a plaintiff who was more upstanding before we went ahead and invested any more time, effort, and money.[7] Colvin was ultimately sentenced to probation for the ordinance violation, but a boycott never materialized from the event.[7]
Some historians have argued that civil rights leaders, who were predominantly middle class, were uneasy with Colvin's lower class background. Indeed, before Colvin, the NAACP had considered and rejected several protesters deemed unsuitable or unable to withstand the pressures of cross-examination during a legal challenge to racial segregation laws.[7]
Court trial
On May 11, 1956, Colvin, along with three other women, testified in a Montgomery federal court hearing about her actions on the bus in a case called Browder v. Gayle. During the trial, Claudette Colvin described her arrest. "I kept saying, 'He has no right... this is my constitutional right... you have no right to do this.' And I just kept blabbing things out, and I never stopped. That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person."[5] "The case was fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court [which declared bus segregation unconstitutional in December 1956]. Attorneys decided not to use colvin in the lawsuit because they wanted to build a case that clearly challenged the legality of bus segregation. colvin had been charged with disorderly conduct."[8]
Personal life
In 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond, who was so fair-skinned (like his father) that people frequently accused her of having a white baby. Colvin "left Montgomery for New York in 1958[7] because she had difficulty finding and keeping work after her arrest, just as Parks had left for Detroit in 1957."[8] She "retired in 2004 after 35 years as a nurse’s aide at a Manhattan nursing home."[1] Colvin never married.[1] "The son she had in Montgomery died at age 37; a second son is an accountant in Atlanta."[1]
Colvin told the Montgomery Advertiser in that she would not have changed her decision to remain seated. "I feel very, very proud of what I did, [she said]. I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on."[9] "I'm not disappointed," Colvin said. "Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. 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."[8]
Legacy
Former U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove published a poem, "Claudette Colvin Goes to Work", in her 1999 poetry collection "On the Bus with Rosa Parks" (W.W. Norton). Folk singer John McCutcheon set it to music and published it—sung by himself, with Rita Dove speaking one line—on his CD "Mightier than the Sword" (2006). The Claudette Colvin song is also available on video; search on YouTube for "Rita Dove Claudette Colvin".
Rita Dove also referred to Claudette Colvin in her magazine article "The Torchbearer Rosa Parks" (TIME, June 14, 1999), http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,991252,00.html
Storyteller-actress Awele Makeba wrote, directed and starred in a one-woman drama, Rage Is Not A 1-Day Thing!, in which Makeba relates the story of the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott through the eyes of Colvin following her arrest.[10]
Phillip Hoose won the 2009 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for his biography "Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice."[1]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f Brookes Barnes (November 25, 2009). "From Footnote to Fame in Civil Rights History". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-11-26.
But there was another woman, named Claudette Colvin, who refused to be treated like a substandard citizen on one of those Montgomery buses—and she did it nine months before Mrs. Parks. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his political debut fighting her arrest. Moreover, she was the star witness in the legal case that eventually forced bus desegregation.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ ISBN 0671687425 p. 123
- ^ "Claudette Colvin: an unsung hero in the Montgomery Bus Boycott". JET. FindArticles. 2005-02-28. Retrieved 2009-11-27.
- ^ a b Gray, Eliza (2009-03-02). "A Forgotten Contribution: Before Rosa Parks, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on the bus". Newsweek. Retrieved 2009-11-26.
On March 2, 1955, nine months before Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., a skinny, 15-year-old schoolgirl was yanked by both wrists and dragged off a very similar bus.
- ^ a b c Brinkley, Douglas (2000). Rosa Parks. Viking. ISBN 9780670891603.
- ^ a b c Dawkins, Amanda (2005-02-07). "'Unsung hero' of boycott paved way for Parks". The Huntsville Times. p. 6B.
- ^ a b c d e f Younge, Gary (2000-12-16). "She would not be moved: Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. Yet months before her arrest on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a 15-year-old girl was charged with the same 'crime'. Why has Claudette Colvin been denied her place in history?". The Guardian. Cite error: The named reference "Guardian1" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ a b c Spratling, Cassandra (2005-11-16). "2 other bus boycott heroes praise Parks' acclaim". Chicago Tribune. p. 2.
- ^ Kitchen, Sebastian (2005-02-04). "Colvin helped light flame of civil rights". Montgomery Advertiser. p. 1.
- ^ "Storyteller presents tale of Montgomery Bus Boycott". GVNow. Grand Valley State University. 2003-01-28. Retrieved 2009-11-27.
Further reading
- Phillip Hoose. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Claudette Colvin, Twice Toward Justice. (2009). ISBN 0374313229.
- Taylor Branch. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, Parting The Waters - American in the King Years 1954-63. (1988). ISBN 0671687425.
External links
- She Had A Dream
- Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott (Preface)
- Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott (Excerpt)
- BROWDER v. GAYLE: The Women Before Rosa Parks. Tolerance.org
- "In The Shadow of Rosa Parks: 'Unsung Hero' Of Civil Rights Movement Speaks Out" by Vanessa de la Torre, The Cardinal Inquirer, January 20, 2005
- She Would Not Be Moved (Article) Guardian.
- An asterisk, not a star, of black history. Pulsejournal.com
