She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. This led to a few articles and profiles by others in subsequent years. 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. "It is he who decides which facts to give the floor and in what order or context. "Aren't you going to get up?" Claudette Colvin became a teenage mother in 1956 when she gave birth to a boy named Raymond. Claudette Colvin, a civil rights pioneer who in March 1955, at the age of 15, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White person on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, is seeking to get her . If one white person wanted to sit down there, then all the black people on that row were supposed to get up and either stand or move further to the back. "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. When Austin abandoned the family, Gadson was unable to financially support her children. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939)[1][2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. 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. Letters of support came from as far afield as Oregon and California. "They just dropped me. 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. She was convicted on all charges, appealed and lost again. Claudette Colvin, Who Was Arrested for Refusing to Give Up Her Bus Seat in 1955, Is Fighting to Clear Her Record The civil rights pioneer pushed back against segregation nine months before Rosa. [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. She works the night shift and sleeps "when the sleep falls on her" during the day. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats.". She sat down in the front of the bus and refused to move on her own will when asked. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. Phillip Hoose also wrote about her in the young adult biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. Claudette Colvin was an African American civil rights activist who pioneered the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. 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 Civil Rights Leader #7. 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. Some people questioned if the father was a white male. Colvin. I was glad that an adult had finally stood up to the system, but I felt left out.. ", "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day," said Rosa Parks. Colvin was the first person to be arrested for challenging Montgomery's bus segregation policies, so her story made a few local papers - but nine months later, the same act of defiance by Rosa Parks was reported all over the world. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. She told me to let Rosa be the one: white people aren't going to bother Rosa, they like her". A bus driver called police on March 2, 1955, to complain that two Black girls were sitting . In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming majority of leaders. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. In July 2014, Claudette Colvin's story was documented in a television episode of Drunk History (Montgomery, AL (Season 2, Episode 1)). The driver caught a glimpse of them through his mirror. Rosa Parks was neither a victim nor a saint, but a long-standing political activist and feminist. "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. This made her very scared that they would sexually assault her because this happened frequently. [26], Together with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanetta Reese, Colvin was one of the five plaintiffs in the court case of Browder v. Gayle. "[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. I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the othersaying, 'Sit down girl!' Rosa Parks was thrown off the bus on a Thursday; by Friday, activists were distributing leaflets that highlighted her arrest as one of many, including those of Colvin and Mary Louise Smith: "Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down," they read. Another cracked a joke about her bra size. So we choose the facts to fit the narrative we want to hear. Despite the light sentence, Colvin could not escape the court of public opinion. Colvin never married but gave birth to two sons, the first was Raymond Colvin (b. December 1955, died 1993). 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. It is this that incenses Patton. ", She believes that, if her pregnancy had been the only issue, they would have found a way to overcome it. The case, organized and filed in federal court by civil rights attorney Fred Gray, challenged city bus segregation in Montgomery as unconstitutional. Rembert said, "I know people have heard her name before, but I just thought we should have a day to celebrate her." During her pregnancy, she was abandoned by civil rights leaders. 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. Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. After her minister paid her bail, she went home where she and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation. In a United States district court, she testified before the three-judge panel that heard the case. 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. Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist of African descent. She spent the next decade going back and forth like a yo-yo between the two cities, she said. Meanwhile, Parks had been transformed from a politically-conscious activist to an upstanding, unfortunate Everywoman. ", "They never thought much of us, so there was no way they were going to run with us," says Hardin. "The news travelled fast," wrote Robinson. Most of the people didn't have problems with us sitting on the bus, most New Yorkers cared about economic problems. March 2 was named Claudette Colvin Day in Montgomery. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. Colvin was initially charged with disturbing the peace, violating the segregation laws, and battering and assaulting a police officer. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman. "When I was in the ninth grade, all the police cars came to get Jeremiah," says Colvin. "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. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) [1] [2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. 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. 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. State and local officials appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn't even go into the same restaurants," Claudette Colvin says. The young Ms. Colvin was portrayed by actress Mariah Iman Wilson. Colvin says that after Supreme Court made its decision, things slowly began to change. She says she expected some abuse from the driver, but nothing more. Second, she was the first person, in Montgomery at least, to take up the challenge. Ward and Paul Headley. 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. In 1960, she gave birth to her second son, Randy. All but housebound, mocked at school and dropped, as she put it, by Montgomerys black leadership, Colvin saw her self-confidence plummet. First Name Claudette #1. "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," Colvin later said. Funeral Services will be held Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. at the Ft. Deposit Municipal Complex with Pastor. To the exclusively male and predominantly middle-class, church-dominated, local black leadership in Montgomery, she was a fallen woman. Today their boycott, modelled on the one in Montgomery, is largely forgotten - but it was a milestone in achieving equality. Tour: Black America and the burden of the perfect victim. "She had been tracked down by the zeitgeist - the spirit of the times." Raymond Colvin, age 62, a resident of Ft. Deposit, AL, died April 13, 2013. She had sons named Raymond and Randy. Her son Raymond Colvin died of a heart attack in 1993. The other three moved, but another black woman, Ruth Hamilton, who was pregnant, got on and sat next to Colvin. How encouraging it would be if more adults had your courage, self-respect and integrity. 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. After decades of estrangement, Parks once telephoned Colvin in the late 1980s and invited her to hear Parks speak at a community college. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of a heart attack at age 37. 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. However, not one has bothered to interview her. [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 asked us both to get up. Read about our approach to external linking. They just didn't want to know me. Colvin has remained unmarried all her life. Moreover, she was not the first person to take a stand by keeping her seat and challenging the system. She gave birth to a fair-skin child named Raymond in the year 1956 whose skin tone was similar to her partner. Claudette Colvin Popularity . Colvin's sister, Gloria Laster, said. Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. I knew what was happening, but I just kept trying to shut it out.". Anything to detach herself from the horror of reality. 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