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Claudette Colvin From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Claudette Colvin Born	September 5, 1939 (age 76) Alabama, U.S. Residence	The Bronx, New York City Occupation	Civil rights activist and nurse Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a pioneer of the African American Civil Rights Movement. On March 2, 1955, she was the first person arrested for resisting bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama.

Colvin was among the five plaintiffs originally included in the federal court case, filed by civil rights attorney Fred Gray on February 1, 1956, as Browder v. Gayle, and testified before the three-judge panel that heard the case in the United States District Court. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. The case went to the United States Supreme Court, which upheld the ruling on December 17, 1956. Colvin was the last witness to testify. Three days later the Supreme Court issued an order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott was called off.

For a long time, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort because she was a teenager who was pregnant by a married man; words like "feisty", "mouthy", and "emotional" were used to describe Colvin while her counterpart Parks was seen as calm, well-mannered, and studious. Given the social norms of the time and her youth, the NAACP leaders worried about using her to represent their boycott.[1][2]

Claudette Colvin: "Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all."[1][3]

Contents [hide] 1	Early life 2	Bus incident 3	Browder v. Gayle 4	Life after activism 5	Legacy 6	See also 7	References 8	Further reading 9	External links Early life[edit] Colvin was born September 5, 1939 and was adopted by C. P. Colvin and Mary Anne Colvin, her father mowed lawns and her mother was a maid.[4] and grew up in a poor black neighborhood of Montgomery, Alabama.[5] In 1943, at the age of four, she had received her first impression on the struggles of segregation. She was at a retail store with her mother when a couple of white boys entered. They asked her to touch hands and compare them. Her mother saw this, slapped her face, and said that she was not allowed to touch them.[3]

Bus incident[edit] In 1955, Colvin was a student at the segregated Booker T. Washington High School in the city.[6] She relied on the city's buses to get to and from school, because her parents did not own a car. She said that she aspired to be President one day. Colvin was a member of the NAACP Youth Council, and had been actively learning about the Civil Rights Movement in school.[7] Colvin was returning home from school on March 2, 1955, and got on a Capitol Heights bus downtown. She was sitting about two seats from the emergency exit in the colored section.[8]

If the bus became so crowded that all the so-called "white seats" in front were filled and a white person was standing, the African Americans were supposed to leave these seats and move to the back and stand, if needed. When a white woman got on the bus and was left standing, bus driver Robert W. Cleere commanded Colvin and three other black women in the row to move to the back. The other three moved, but a pregnant black woman, Ruth Hamilton, got on and sat next to Colvin.

The driver looked at them through his mirror. "He asked us both to get up. [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. "So I told him I was not going to get up, either. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman.'" The police arrived and convinced a black man sitting behind the two women to move so that Mrs. Hamilton could move back, but Colvin continued to refuse. She was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested by the two policemen, Thomas J. Ward and Paul Headley where she spent the car ride being sexually harassed about her bra size.[9][10][11] This was nine months before NAACP Secretary Rosa Parks was famously arrested for the same offense.[1] Claudette Colvin: "My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. She told me to let Rosa be the one, white people aren't going to bother Rosa they like her".[3]

When Colvin refused to get up, she was thinking about a school paper that she had written that day about the local custom that prevented blacks from using the dressing rooms and trying on clothing in department stores.[12] She said in a later interview: "We couldn't try on clothes. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot ... and take it to the store.”[13] and "She couldn't sit in the same row as us because that would mean we were as good as her"

"The bus was getting crowded and I remember the bus driver looking through the rear view mirror asking her to get up for the white woman, which she didn't," said Annie Larkins Price, a classmate of Colvin's. "She had been yelling 'It's my constitutional right'. She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move."[14] Colvin was handcuffed, arrested and forcibly removed from the bus. She shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated.[1][10] Price testified for Colvin in the juvenile court case. Colvin was convicted of disturbing the peace, violating the segregation law, and assault.[14] "There was no assault," Price said.[14]

Browder v. Gayle[edit] Main article: Browder v. Gayle Colvin was also one of five plaintiffs, along with Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Jeanatta Reese, in the court case Browder v. Gayle. The case, organized and filed by civil rights attorney Fred Gray, determined that bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama was unconstitutional.[15] With the amount of support fueled by the black community, the country had no choice but to lift the segregated policies and create more fair ones.[16] During the trial, Colvin described her arrest:

"I kept saying, 'He has no civil 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."[12]

The case was appealed by state and local officials to the United States Supreme Court. On November 13, 1956, the case was heard by the Supreme Court who affirmed the District Court's ruling. In December, the Supreme Court declined to reconsider and on December 20, 1956, it ordered Montgomery and Alabama to end bus segregation in the state.[17]

Life after activism[edit] On March 29, 1956, Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond. He was so light-skinned (like his father) that people frequently said his father was a white man. Colvin left Montgomery for New York in 1958,[11] because she had difficulty finding and keeping work after the notoriety of the federal court case overturning bus segregation. (Similarly, Parks left Montgomery for Detroit in 1957.)[17] Colvin said that, after her actions on the bus, she was branded a troublemaker by those in her community, and had to drop out of college.[15]

In New York, the young Colvin and Raymond first lived with her older sister, Velma Colvin. She got a job as a nurse’s aide in a nursing home in Manhattan, where she worked for 35 years. She retired in 2004. Colvin never married. While living in New York, she had a second son, who became an accountant in Atlanta, married and had his own family. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 at age 37 in New York.[1]

Legacy[edit] Though Colvin was the "spark" that may have ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott movement, she rarely told her story once she moved to New York City. Conversation in the black community focused on black enterprise by this time rather than on integration issues. NPR's Margot Adler said that black organizations felt that Rosa Parks made a better test case for integration because she was an adult, and she had the right hair and look to make her appear middle class.[7]

In 2005, Colvin told the Montgomery Advertiser that she would not have changed her decision to remain seated.

"I feel very, very proud of what I did. I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on."[18] "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."[17]

Colvin has often said that she is not angry she did not get the recognition she deserved, but instead disappointed. She said she felt as if she was "getting her Christmas in January rather than the 25th."[19]

In the second season of the HBO drama The Newsroom, lead character Will McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels) uses Colvin's non-disclosure as an example for how "one thing" can change everything. He describes how if she had been used by the ACLU to describe the injustice, rather than Rosa Parks' civil disobedience event 8 months later, A young preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would never have been heard of; therefore, if not for a political decision, America probably doesn't have a voice for the civil rights movement.

The second season of the Comedy Central TV show Drunk History tells the story of Claudette refusing to give up her bus seat and the NAACP's decision to stage a similar protest with Rosa Parks. In the episode in which her story is featured, host Derek Waters asks a young Atlanta resident if he knows about various figures from the civil rights movement. When Derek mentions Claudette the man admits he'd never heard of her.

See also[edit] List of civil rights leaders Montgomery Bus Boycott Mary Louise Smith Aurelia Browder Irene Morgan E. D. Nixon Sarah Keys References[edit] ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Brookes Barnes (November 26, 2009). "From Footnote to Fame in Civil Rights History". The New York Times. Jump up ^ Branch, Taylor (1989). Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63. Simon & Schuster. p. 123. ISBN 0671687425. ^ Jump up to: a b c Hoose, Phillip (2009). Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice. Melanie Kroupa Books. Jump up ^ Phibbs, Cheryl (2009). The Montgomery Bus Boycott: A History and Reference Guide. ABC-CLIO. Jump up ^ Blattman, Elissa "#ThrowbackThursday: The girl who acted before Rosa Parks". National Women's History Museum. Retrieved February 9, 2016. Jump up ^ "Claudette Colvin: an unsung hero in the Montgomery Bus Boycott". Jet (FindArticles). 2005-02-28. Retrieved 2009-11-27. ^ Jump up to: a b Adler, Margot. Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin. NPR. March 15, 2009. Retrieved November 24, 2013. Jump up ^ Phibbs, Cheryl. "Claudette Colvin". ABC-CLIO. Retrieved 12 May 2014. Jump up ^ Greenhaw, Wayne (2007). Thunder of Angels : The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. ^ Jump up to: 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. Archived from the original on April 1, 2009. 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. ^ Jump up to: a b Younge, Gary (2000-12-16). "She would not be moved". London: The Guardian. ^ Jump up to: a b Brinkley, Douglas (2000). Rosa Parks. Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-89160-3. Jump up ^ Addler, Morgot. "Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin". National Public Radio. Retrieved 12 May 2014. ^ Jump up to: a b c Dawkins, Amanda (2005-02-07). "'Unsung hero' of boycott paved way for Parks.". The Huntsville Times. p. 6B. ^ Jump up to: a b "Claudette Colvin Biography". Bio. Retrieved February 8, 2016. Jump up ^ White, Deborah G. Freedom on my Mind: A History of African Americans w/ documents vol. 2. Bedford/St. Martin’s 2013. p. 616. ^ Jump up to: a b c Spratling, Cassandra (2005-11-16). "2 other bus boycott heroes praise Parks' acclaim". Chicago Tribune. p. 2. Jump up ^ Kitchen, Sebastian (2005-02-04). "Colvin helped light flame of civil rights.". Montgomery Advertiser. p. 1. Jump up ^ Kitchen, Sebastian. "Claudette Colvin". Montgomery Advertiser. The Mongomery Bus Boycott. Retrieved February 8, 2016. Further reading[edit] Phillip Hoose. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), Claudette Colvin, Twice Toward Justice. (2009). ISBN 0-374-31322-9. Taylor Branch. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, Parting The Waters - American in the King Years 1954-63. (1988). ISBN 0-671-68742-5. External links[edit] Wikiquote has quotations related to: Claudette Colvin The Other Rosa Parks (Claudette giving a rare interview with Democracy Now!) 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 Vanessa de la Torre, "In The Shadow of Rosa Parks: 'Unsung Hero' Of Civil Rights Movement Speaks Out", The Cardinal Inquirer, January 20, 2005 "She Would Not Be Moved", The Guardian "An asterisk, not a star, of black history", Pulsejournal Let us Look at Jim Crow for the Criminal He Is; Claudette Colvin. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.

[hide] v t e African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68) Notable events (timeline) 1954–1959	Brown v. Board of Education Bolling v. Sharpe Briggs v. Elliott Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County Gebhart v. Belton Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company Emmett Till Montgomery Bus Boycott Browder v. Gayle Mansfield school desegregation 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom "Give Us the Ballot" Royal Ice Cream Sit-in Little Rock Nine National Guard blockade Civil Rights Act of 1957 Kissing Case Biloxi Wade-Ins 1960–1963	Greensboro sit-ins Nashville sit-ins Civil Rights Act of 1960 Gomillion v. Lightfoot Boynton v. Virginia Freedom Rides attacks Garner v. Louisiana Albany Movement University of Chicago sit-ins "Second Emancipation Proclamation" Meredith enrollment, Ole Miss riot 1963 Birmingham campaign Children's Crusade Letter from Birmingham Jail Birmingham riot 16th Street Baptist Church bombing Stand in the Schoolhouse Door John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights Address March on Washington "I Have a Dream" St. Augustine movement 1964–1968	Twenty-fourth Amendment Bloody Tuesday Freedom Summer workers' murders Civil Rights Act of 1964 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches "How Long, Not Long" Voting Rights Act of 1965 Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections March Against Fear White House Conference on Civil Rights Chicago Open Housing Movement Memphis Sanitation Strike King assassination funeral riots Poor People's Campaign Civil Rights Act of 1968 Related Jim Crow laws Plessy v. Ferguson Separate but equal Buchanan v. Warley Hocutt v. Wilson Sweatt v. Painter Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States Katzenbach v. McClung Loving v. Virginia Fifth Circuit Four Massive resistance March on Washington Movement African-American churches attacked Journey of Reconciliation Freedom Songs "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around" "I Love Everybody" "Kumbaya" "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" "Oh, Freedom" "This Little Light of Mine" "We Shall Not Be Moved" "We Shall Overcome" Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" Watts riots Voter Education Project 1960s counterculture In popular culture Museums King Memorial Activist groups Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights Atlanta Student Movement Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Council for United Civil Rights Leadership Dallas County Voters League Deacons for Defense and Justice Georgia Council on Human Relations Highlander Folk School Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Nashville Student Movement NAACP Youth Council Northern Student Movement National Council of Negro Women National Urban League Operation Breadbasket Regional Council of Negro Leadership Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Southern Regional Council Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) The Freedom Singers Wednesdays in Mississippi Women's Political Council Activists Ralph Abernathy Victoria Gray Adams Zev Aelony Mathew Ahmann William G. Anderson Gwendolyn Armstrong Arnold Aronson Ella Baker Marion Barry Daisy Bates Harry Belafonte James Bevel Claude Black Gloria Blackwell Randolph Blackwell Unita Blackwell Ezell Blair Jr. Joanne Bland Julian Bond Joseph E. Boone William Holmes Borders Amelia Boynton Raylawni Branch Ruby Bridges Aurelia Browder H. Rap Brown Guy Carawan Stokely Carmichael Johnnie Carr James Chaney J. L. Chestnut Colia Lafayette Clark Ramsey Clark Septima Clark Xernona Clayton Eldridge Cleaver Kathleen Neal Cleaver Charles E. Cobb Jr. Annie Lee Cooper Dorothy Cotton Claudette Colvin Vernon Dahmer Jonathan Daniels Joseph DeLaine Annie Devine Patricia Stephens Due Charles Evers Medgar Evers Myrlie Evers-Williams Chuck Fager James Farmer Walter E. Fauntroy James Forman Marie Foster Golden Frinks Andrew Goodman Fred Gray Jack Greenberg Dick Gregory Lawrence Guyot Prathia Hall Fannie Lou Hamer William E. Harbour Vincent Harding Dorothy Height Lola Hendricks Aaron Henry Oliver Hill Donald L. Hollowell James Hood Myles Horton Zilphia Horton T. R. M. Howard Ruby Hurley Jesse Jackson Jimmie Lee Jackson Richie Jean Jackson T. J. Jemison Esau Jenkins Barbara Rose Johns Vernon Johns Frank Minis Johnson Lyndon Johnson Clarence Jones Matthew Jones Vernon Jordan Tom Kahn Clyde Kennard A. D. King C.B. King Coretta Scott King Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Sr. Bernard Lafayette James Lawson Bernard Lee Sanford R. Leigh Jim Letherer Stanley Levison John Lewis Viola Liuzzo Z. Alexander Looby Joseph Lowery Clara Luper Malcolm X Mae Mallory Vivian Malone Thurgood Marshall Franklin McCain Charles McDew Ralph McGill Floyd McKissick Joseph McNeil James Meredith William Ming Jack Minnis Amzie Moore Douglas E. Moore William Lewis Moore Irene Morgan Bob Moses William Moyer Diane Nash Charles Neblett Edgar Nixon Jack O'Dell James Orange Rosa Parks James Peck Charles Person Homer Plessy Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Fay Bellamy Powell Al Raby Lincoln Ragsdale A. Philip Randolph George Raymond Jr. Bernice Johnson Reagon Cordell Reagon James Reeb Frederick D. Reese Gloria Richardson David Richmond Jo Ann Robinson Bayard Rustin Bernie Sanders Michael Schwerner Cleveland Sellers Charles Sherrod Alexander D. Shimkin Fred Shuttlesworth Modjeska Monteith Simkins A. Maceo Smith Kelly Miller Smith Mary Louise Smith Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson Charles Kenzie Steele Dorothy Tillman A. P. Tureaud Hartman Turnbow C. T. Vivian Wyatt Tee Walker Hollis Watkins Walter Francis White Roy Wilkins Hosea Williams Kale Williams Robert F. Williams Andrew Young Whitney Young Sammy Younge Jr. James Zwerg Influences Nonviolence Padayatra Jesus Sermon on the Mount Mohandas K. Gandhi Ahimsa Satyagraha Leo Tolstoy The Kingdom of God is Within You Frederick Douglass W. E. B. Du Bois Noted historians Taylor Branch Clayborne Carson John Dittmer Michael Eric Dyson Chuck Fager Adam Fairclough David Garrow David Halberstam Vincent Harding Steven F. Lawson Doug McAdam Diane McWhorter Charles M. Payne Timothy Tyson Akinyele Umoja Movement photographers Authority control WorldCat Identities VIAF: 6859285 LCCN: n2008009234 GND: 1049454375