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Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin
March 15, 2009 12:46 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday
Margot Adler
Claudette Colvin
Retiree Claudette Colvin was 15 the day she refused to give up her seat on the bus. "My head was just too full of black history, you know, the oppression that we went through," she says.
Courtesy of Alean Bowser
Read an excerpt from Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose.
The day Colvin held her own bus sit-in, her class had talked about the injustices they were experiencing daily under Jim Crow segregation laws.
When the driver of the segregated bus, like the one shown above, ordered Colvin to get up, she refused, saying she'd paid her fare and it was her constitutional right. Two police officers handcuffed and arrested her.
Courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Department of Archives and Manuscripts
Few people know the story of Claudette Colvin: When she was 15, she refused to move to the back of the bus and give up her seat to a white person — nine months before Rosa Parks did the very same thing.
Most people know about Parks and the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott that began in 1955, but few know that there were a number of women who refused to give up their seats on the same bus system. Most of the women were quietly fined, and no one heard much more.
Colvin was the first to really challenge the law.
Now a 69-year-old retiree, Colvin lives in the Bronx. She remembers taking the bus home from high school on March 2, 1955, as clear as if it were yesterday.
The bus driver ordered her to get up and she refused, saying she'd paid her fare and it was her constitutional right. Two police officers put her in handcuffs and arrested her. Her school books went flying off her lap.
"All I remember is that I was not going to walk off the bus voluntarily," Colvin says.
It was Negro history month, and at her segregated school they had been studying black leaders like Harriet Tubman, the runaway slave who led more than 70 slaves to freedom through the network of safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. They were also studying about Sojourner Truth, a former slave who became an abolitionist and women's rights activist.
The class had also been talking about the injustices they were experiencing daily under the Jim Crow segregation laws, like not being able to eat at a lunch counter.
"We couldn't try on clothes," Colvin says. "You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot ... and take it to the store. Can you imagine all of that in my mind? My head was just too full of black history, you know, the oppression that we went through. It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn't get up."
Colvin also remembers the moment the jail door closed. It was just like a Western movie, she says.
"And then I got scared, and panic come over me, and I started crying. Then I started saying the Lord's Prayer," she says.
'Twice Toward Justice'
Now her story is the subject of a new book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.
Author Phil Hoose says that despite a few articles about her in the Birmingham press and in USA Today, and brief mentions in some books about the civil rights movement, most people don't know about the role Colvin played in the bus boycotts.
Hoose couldn't get over that there was this teenager, nine months before Rosa Parks, "in the same city, in the same bus system, with very tough consequences, hauled off the bus, handcuffed, jailed and nobody really knew about it."
He also believes Colvin is important because she challenged the law in court, one of four women plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the court case that successfully overturned bus segregation laws in Montgomery and Alabama.
There are many reasons why Claudette Colvin has been pretty much forgotten. She hardly ever told her story when she moved to New York City. In her new community, hardly anyone was talking about integration; instead, most people were talking about black enterprises, black power and Malcolm X.
When asked why she is little known and why everyone thinks only of Rosa Parks, Colvin says the NAACP and all the other black organizations felt Parks would be a good icon because "she was an adult. They didn't think teenagers would be reliable."
She also says Parks had the right hair and the right look.
"Her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class," says Colvin. "She fit that profile."
David Garrow, a historian and the author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says people may think that Parks' action was spontaneous, but black civic leaders had been thinking about what to do about the Montgomery buses for years.
After Colvin's arrest, she found herself shunned by parts of her community. She experienced various difficulties and became pregnant. Civil rights leaders felt she was an inappropriate symbol for a test case.
Parks was the secretary of the NAACP. She was well-known and respected and, says Garrow, Parks had a "natural gravitas" and was an "inherently impressive person."
At the same time, Garrow believes attention to Colvin is a healthy corrective, because "the real reality of the movement was often young people and often more than 50 percent women." The images you most often see are men in suits.
Hoose says he believes Colvin understands the pragmatism that pushed Parks to the fore, but "on the other hand, she did it."
Hoose says the stories of Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are wonderful, but those are the stories of people in their 30s and 40s. Colvin was 15. Hoose feels his book will bring a fresh teen's perspective to the struggle to end segregation.
Excerpt: 'Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice'
CLAUDETTE: One of them said to the driver in a very angry tone, "Who is it?" The motorman pointed at me. I heard him say, "That's nothing new . . . I've had trouble with that 'thing' before." He called me a "thing." They came to me and stood over me and one said, "Aren't you going to get up?" I said, "No, sir." He shouted "Get up" again. I started crying, but I felt even more defiant. I kept saying over and over, in my high-pitched voice, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right!" I knew I was talking back to a white policeman, but I had had enough.
One cop grabbed one of my hands and his partner grabbed the other and they pulled me straight up out of my seat. My books went flying everywhere. I went limp as a baby—I was too smart to fight back. They started dragging me backwards off the bus. One of them kicked me. I might have scratched one of them because I had long nails, but I sure didn't fight back. I kept screaming over and over, "It's my constitutional right!" I wasn't shouting anything profane—I never swore, not then, not ever. I was shouting out my rights.
It just killed me to leave the bus. I hated to give that white woman my seat when so many black people were standing. I was crying hard. The cops put me in the back of a police car and shut the door. They stood outside and talked to each other for a minute, and then one came back and told me to stick my hands out the open window. He handcuffed me and then pulled the door open and jumped in the backseat with me. I put my knees together and crossed my hands over my lap and started praying.
All ride long they swore at me and ridiculed me. They took turns trying to guess my bra size. They called me "****** bitch" and cracked jokes about parts of my body. I recited the Lord's Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm over and over in my head, trying to push back the fear. I assumed they were taking me to juvenile court because I was only fifteen. I was thinking, Now I'm gonna be picking cotton, since that's how they punished juveniles—they put you in a school out in the country where they made you do field work during the day.
But we were going in the wrong direction. They kept telling me I was going to Atmore, the women's penitentiary. Instead, we pulled up to the police station and they led me inside. More cops looked up when we came in and started calling me "Thing" and "Whore." They booked me and took my fingerprints.
Then they put me back in the car and drove me to the city jail—the adult jail. Someone led me straight to a cell without giving me any chance to make a phone call. He opened the door and told me to get inside. He shut it hard behind me and turned the key. The lock fell into place with a heavy sound. It was the worst sound I ever heard. It sounded final. It said I was trapped.
When he went away, I looked around me: three bare walls, a toilet, and a cot. Then I feel down on my knees in the middle of the cell and started crying again. I didn't know if anyone knew where I was or what had happened to me. I had no idea how long I would be there. I cried and I put my hands together and prayed like I had never prayed before.
• • •
MEANWHILE, schoolmates who had been on the bus had run home and telephoned Claudette's mother at the house where she worked as a maid. Girls went over and took care of the lady's three small children so that Claudette's mother could leave. Mary Ann Colvin called Claudette's pastor, the Reverend H.H. Johnson. He had a car, and together they sped to the police station.
• • •
CLAUDETTE: When they led Mom back, there I was in a cell. I was cryin' hard, and then Mom got upset, too. When she saw me, she didn't bawl me out, she just asked, "Are you all right, Claudette?"
Reverend Johnson bailed me out and we drove home. By the time we got to King Hill, word had spread everywhere. All our neighbors came around, and they were just squeezing me to death. I felt happy and proud. I had been talking about getting our rights ever since Jeremiah Reeves was arrested, and now they knew I was serious. Velma, Q.P. and Mary Ann's daughter, who was living with us at the time, kept saying it was my squeaky little voice that had saved me from getting beat up or raped by the cops.
But I was afraid that night, too. I had stood up to a white bus driver and two white cops. I had challenged the bus law. There had been lynchings and cross burnings for that kind of thing. Wetumpka Highway that led out of Montgomery ran right past our house. It would have been easy for the Klan to come up the hill in the night. Dad sat up all night long with his shotgun. We all stayed up. The neighbors facing the highway kept watch. Probably nobody on King Hill slept that night.
But worried or not, I felt proud. I had stood up for our rights. I had done something a lot of adults hadn't done. On the ride home from jail, coming over the viaduct, Reverend Johnson had said something to me I'll never forget. He was an adult who everyone respected and his opinion meant a lot to me. "Claudette," he said, "I'm so proud of you. Everyone prays for freedom. We've all been praying and praying. But you're different—you want your answer the next morning. And I think you just brought the revolution to Montgomery."
Excerpted with permission from Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip Hoose.
Correction March 17, 2009
The introduction to this story said, "...on Dec. 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Ala., Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus and give up her seat to a white person." In fact, Parks was already sitting in the black section in the back of the bus when she refused to give up her seat.
https://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/10171...audette-colvin
It was the courage of Claudette Colvin, not Rosa Parks, that started the desegregation on buses in Montgomery. Rosa Parks was inserted as a PR move, all protected and staged by the NAACP. It's Claudette Colvin who should be recognized, not Rosa Parks. It's so sad how black Americans have been lied to about so much of their history even by the NAACP.
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Oh this woman was so amazing.
far left wing want us to be feeling guilty for black history, why we're not doing a march for the white day history?.
We have black history month because so much of black history has been concealed and distorted. I support black history month which benefits all Americans both black and white. White people need to know more about black Americans and black Americans need to know more about the important roles their relatives and ancestors played in building our country along with the horrible suffering they endured as slaves. Even as slaves, they loved our country which is a phenomenal thing when you think about it, such strong characters and intelligence to know the difference between what their own situation was and what it should have been and could be with freedom.
Does Black History Month also cover the SLAVES the black people had in Africa?
They had slaves way before ANY slaves, that their black people sold and came to America?
They had Irish slaves whom they tortured, raped and murdered...many were never found. They suffered horrible tragedies.
Does Black History Month cite any improvements they have made over the last 10 years? 20 years? 100 years?
How is the whole continent of Africa doing these days? Cover THAT history! How is their economy? How come they are still living in the mud? How come they still have 10 kids? Aids, diseases, no food? What have they invented?
How do these black people treat their women? 100 years ago and 10 days ago?
Slavery is wrong...but we have given these people many opportunities to education and a better life. What they do with that is up to the individual. Bad choices in life equal bad outcomes.
Black History Month is important because of all the history that was concealed about the contributions of slaves and black Americans to our country. If they had a normal history that was written about like everyone else's history, then black history month wouldn't be necessary or important, but it wasn't written about, many lies and distortions were written instead, that's why it's so important and I believe necessary. At some point in time, it probably won't be necessary but at this point in time, I think it still is needed.
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Boomslang, thank you so much for opening this thread and posting all these great black history articles.
Me i am scared of black people, I fear soon their is a black man.
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Beautiful and so true.
We're making progress, and black Americans have come a long way, just not far enough, fast enough. Why? The main reason is massive immigration. If you support immigration, you are opposed to black Americans. If you support illegal immigration, you are robbing black Americans in ways far worse than any thug holding up a 7/11.
What does jesus have to do with? Curious!!
Oh that is an easy one. The United States is not a "kingdom". We are a nation of the people of the United States. It's like Trump said, we own our government, we own our country, we are not a kingdom divided against itself. We are a nation of citizens fighting for our country and citizens.
Jesus also said "beware the scribes". You know who those "scribes" are right? They're the people telling you to give them your money and they'll tell you what to think. They are the people who work for churches, who get their salaries and nice lifestyles from people willing to give them their money in exchange for these workers posing as "men of God" to tell the people what to think.
While having a religious doctrine as part of living a "good life" so you can get to Heaven is fine, and getting charged up every Sunday to go out the next week and be a better person is fine, too, did it for years, our churches are corrupt. There has been so much money flowing into them that memberships and money are the driving forces behind them now.
These church leaders are the ones who need to be sat down and told to shut up and listen. These people, not a one of them, has a clue, not one of them. The believer in the back row who works at a real job for real money who goes to service when he can and gives when he can but who gets up every day of his life to go to work, do his job and expect a paycheck in return, who doesn't cheat at work, who doesn't lie to his friends or customers, who has some fun but not at someone else's expense, who just lives right the best he can and teaches his family to do likewise, these are the people who matter. These are the people who elected Donald Trump the 45th President of the United States, and these are the people who will save our country, because these are the people who don't quit in the middle of a job or jump ship in the middle of a battle, because things got a little hard or a little complicated.
I don't think Jesus was referring to anything other than nations that destroy themselves through coup d'etats and civil wars. We had one of those to end slavery and survived. We will not have another. The DemoQuacks are working hard right now on a coup d'etat, but the dear Republicans have outwitted them and turned the tables. The United States is in good hands right now with Trump at the helm and Republicans almost in charge of Congress, not quite yet because we don't have a 60 seat majority in the US Senate. But stay tuned!!! Our coffers are loaded up, Trump's numbers are rising, good things are happening in every possible area of our country, and when we go out to campaign, we are going to have one of the best messages for Americans with positive results and good outcomes all over the place to tout about, that it will be very hard not to support the Republican, if they're a good solid candidate. Vet them well, Republicans!! The objective is to win in November, keep that in mind at all times.
If our country didn't fight itself, we would still have slavery and indentured servants.
If our colonies hadn't fought England, we would be part of Great Britain.
If women hadn't fought men, I wouldn't be able to vote or own property that I control.
The 13th Amendment was passed and ratified the year the war ended in 1865, and the 14th Amendment also passed in 1865 was ratified in 1868 and the 15th Amendment was passed in 1866 and ratified in 1870. That's pretty damn quick if you ask me considering all Democrats opposed them all. We owe those Amendments to Republicans, and the 14th and 15th especially to the Radical Republicans, what a bunch of heroes those men were. To this day, those men make me so proud to be a Republican, as do the 2,000,000 mostly Republicans who volunteered to join the Union Army to give their own lives to end slavery in the US. Democrats have lied for over 150 years about those soldiers, teaching that they were drafted. No they were not drafted, they were volunteers. One summer, about 90 days, there was shortage of soldiers in New York and 48,000 additional soldiers were recruited through a draft, but as soon as the shortage was filled, less than 90 days later, the draft was ended. It was also a peculiar draft, if you got the draft notice, you could pay someone to take your spot.
The United States is the only country in world history to end slavery with a civil war, because the character of the American people is the only character in world history that would lead young men off farms, away from their families and businesses to face a horrible bloody war to defend the rights of people they didn't even know, had never met, in lots of cases ever seen, and would never know them or even thank them. It was the most selfless action by one group of people for the benefit of another in the history of the world.
To think our country wasn't made right, is mistaken. We were made exactly right, by the character of our citizens who would readily give their lives to correct a wrong.
To put it into perspective, 2,048,000 Americans fought the bloodiest war with the greatest number of casualties in the history of our nation, freed 4 million slaves in the South, restored order, managed a reconstruction, passed the US Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed and ratified 3 Constitutional Amendments, and saved our nation by readmitting the Confederate States to our Union in 9 years.
Compare that to today .... where we can't even pass an E-Verify law in over 12 years.
Our best hope for our country is to be half as good as the people who founded this nation, who fought and won the Civil War, and the 12 million Americans who fought and won WWII in 3 years and 8 months.
So, to me, any of us walking around our land today, should have only the highest possible regard for the people who founded this great nation, fought the bloodiest war in our history to deliver the full promise of freedom, and defended our country against the Germans and Japanese.
You have to fight to make things right. You have to stand up. You may lose the fight, but you will never win without trying.
Humans are not perfect. So, countries aren't perfect. We are all sinners, right? Which is why Jesus said, judge not lest ye be judged.
There is a time and place for all things.
Right now in the United States, the American People are very busy fixing our country, and so far, I think we're doing a really great job!!!
And as soon as we get rid of at least 10 DemoQuacks in the US Senate and replace them with Real Republicans, you can watch US soar.
:)
Democrats hated black people with a passion, and when you look around and see reality, many of them still do.