", To complicate matters, a pregnant black woman, Mrs Hamilton, got on and sat next to Colvin. ", Rosa Parks is a heroine to the US civil rights movement. Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were both African Americans who sought the abolition of slavery, Tubman was well known for helping 300 fellow slaves escape slavery using the, Truth was a passionate campaigner who fought for women's rights, best known for her speech, Claudette Colvin spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service. Her parents were Mary Jane Gadson and C.P. It was a case of 'bourgey' blacks looking down on the working-class blacks. Colvin went to her job instead. "The light-skinned girls always thought they were better looking," says Colvin. [27], In New York, Colvin and her son Raymond initially lived with her older sister, Velma Colvin. Colvin. When the trial was held, Colvin pleaded innocent but was found guilty and released on indefinite probation in her parents' care. Colvins son Raymond died in 1993. March 2 was named Claudette Colvin Day in Montgomery. Blake approached her. Claudette Colvin : biography. Nine months before Parks's arrest, a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, was thrown off a bus in the same town and in almost identical circumstances. Listen to Claudette Colvin's interview on Outlook on the BBC World Service. How encouraging it would be if more adults had your courage, self-respect and integrity. And, like Parks, the local black establishment started to rally support nationwide for her cause. They just didn't want to know me. Funeral Services will be held Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. at the Ft. Deposit Municipal Complex with Pastor. [36], Colvin and her family have been fighting for recognition for her action. Men instructed their wives to walk or to share rides in neighbour's autos.". After her arrest and late appearance in the court hearing, she was more or less forgotten. And, like the pregnant Mrs Hamilton, many African-Americans refused to tolerate the indignity of the South's racist laws in silence. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery. He could not bring himself to chide Mrs Hamilton in her condition, but he could not allow her to stay where she was and flout the law as he understood it, either. "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. 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. [4] Colvin later said: "My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. "Claudette gave all of us moral courage. They felt she had the maturity to handle being at the center of potential controversy. He remarks that if the ACLU had used her act of civil disobedience, rather than that of Rosa Parks' eight months later, to highlight the injustice of segregation, a young preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. may never have attracted national attention, and America probably would not have had his voice for the Civil Rights Movement. The policeman grabbed her and took her to a patrolman's car in which his colleagues were waiting. "He said he wanted the people to know about the 15-year-old, because really, if I had not made the first cry for freedom, there wouldn't have been a Rosa Parks, and after Rosa Parks, there wouldn't have been a Dr King. Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) is a retired American nurse aide who was a pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement. [2][14] Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. One white woman defended Colvin to the police; another said that, if she got away with this, "they will take over". Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist who, before .css-47aoac{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.0625rem;text-decoration-color:inherit;text-underline-offset:0.25rem;color:#A00000;-webkit-transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;transition:all 0.3s ease-in-out;}.css-47aoac:hover{color:#595959;text-decoration-color:border-link-body-hover;}Rosa Parks, refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. "Nobody slept at home because we thought there would be some retaliation," says Colvin. 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. "[22] Colvin was handcuffed, arrested, and forcibly removed from the bus. An ad hoc committee headed by the most prominent local black activist, ED Nixon, was set up to discuss the possibility of making Colvin's arrest a test case. Another cracked a joke about her bra size. But the very spirit and independence of mind that had inspired Parks to challenge segregation started to pose a threat to Montgomery's black male hierarchy, which had started to believe, and then resent, their own spin. 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. Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist of African descent. She was detained on March 2, 1955, in . In 1958, Colvin moved from Montgomery to New York City because she was having trouble obtaining and keeping a job after taking part in the . "[38], Colvin's role has not gone completely unrecognized. "For a while, there was a real distance between me and Mrs Parks over this. She needed support. "And since it had to happen, I'm happy it happened to a person like Mrs Parks," said Martin Luther King from the pulpit of the Holt Street Baptist Church. In a letter published shortly before Shabbaz's death, she wrote to Parks with both praise and perspective: "'Standing up' was not even being the first to protest that indignity. "You got to get up," they shouted. "[citation needed], The police officers who took her to the station made sexual comments about her body and took turns guessing her bra size throughout the ride. In court, Colvin opposed the segregation law by declaring herself not guilty. She was born on September 5, 1939. [11][12], Two days before Colvin's 13th birthday, Delphine died of polio. Like Parks, she, too, pleaded not guilty to breaking the law. Phillip Hoose is author of Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice., On March2, 1955, a young African American woman boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., took her seat and, minutes later, refused the drivers command to surrender it to a white passenger. "Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' Colvin was a member of the NAACP Youth Council and had been learning about the civil rights movement in school. Phillip Hoose also wrote about her in the young adult biography Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. Sikora telephoned a startled Colvin and wrote an article about her. "It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing.". 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. But Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion. 1939- Claudette was born in Birmingham 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the presidential term of office . "[21] Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. "Well, I'm going to have you arrested," he replied. But Colvin told the driver she had paid her fare and that it was her constitutional right to remain where she was. At the time, Parks was a seamstress in a local department store but was also a secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). ", Nonetheless, the shock waves of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond. [9] When they took Claudette in, the Colvins lived in Pine Level, a small country town in Montgomery County, the same town where Rosa Parks grew up. Her reputation also made it impossible for her to find a job. Claudette Colvin gave birth to a son named Raymond in the same year 1955. [24] She was convicted on all three charges in juvenile court. "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. Colvin is not exactly bitter. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin was arrested. . Claudette Colvin was born Claudette Austin in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 5, 1939, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin. Civil Rights Leader #7. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. People often make death hoaxes of well-known personalities to get public attention and views. [28] Colvin stated she was branded a troublemaker by many in her community. Two police officers arrived and pulled her from her seat. Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939)[1][2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. Her first son died in 1993. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People briefly considered using Colvin's case to challenge the segregation laws, but they decided against it because of her age. ", "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day," said Rosa Parks. That meant most of the dark complexion ones didn't like themselves. Similarly, Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Detroit in 1957. She gave birth to a fair-skin child named Raymond in the year 1956 whose skin tone was similar to her partner. he asked. This made her very scared that they would sexually assault her because this happened frequently. [citation needed]. As an adult, she worked as a nurse's assistant in New . He was . Claudette Colvin Popularity . 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. After training, she landed a job as a nurses aide in a Catholic hospital in Manhattan. Later, she would tell a reporter that she would sometimes attend the rallies at the churches. Associated With. Almost nine months after Colvins bus protest, she heard news reports that Parks, a 42-year-old seamstress, had likewise been arrested for a bus seating protest. "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. Claudette Colvin became a teenage mother in 1956 when she gave birth to a boy named Raymond. "[35], I dont think theres room for many more icons. In this small, elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches and watch an impoverished world go by. ", Almost 50 years on, Colvin still talks about the incident with a mixture of shock and indignation - as though she still cannot believe that this could have happened to her. "I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on. If the bus became so crowded that all the "white seats" in the front of the bus were filled until white people were standing, any African Americans were supposed to get up from nearby seats to make room for whites, move further to the back, and stand in the aisle if there were no free seats in that section. [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 never married but gave birth to two sons, the first was Raymond Colvin (b. December 1955, died 1993). The decision in the 1956 case, which had been filed by Fred Gray and Charles D. Langford on behalf of the aforementioned African American women, ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. I say it felt as though Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth's hands were pushing me down on the other shoulder. We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,contact us! Today their boycott, modelled on the one in Montgomery, is largely forgotten - but it was a milestone in achieving equality. Nobody can doubt the height of her character, nobody can doubt the depth of her Christian commitment and devotion to the teachings of Jesus." "Never. In New York, Colvin gave birth to another son, Randy. '", The atmosphere on the bus became very tense. It is the story of Claudette Colvin, who was 15 when she waged her brave protest nine months before Parks did and has spent an eternity in Parkss shadow. When Claudette Colvin's high school in Montgomery, Alabama, observed Negro History Week in 1955, the 15-year-old had no way of knowing how the stories of Black freedom fighters would soon impact . It was a milestone in achieving equality convicted on all three charges in juvenile court, Colvin interview! Accuracy and fairness.If you see something that does n't look right, contact US for while... 24 ] she was detained on march 2 was named Claudette Colvin 's role has gone. Her because this happened frequently 's 13th birthday, Delphine died of polio Well, I dont theres! Learning about the civil rights movement ask me: 'Why did n't like themselves a nurse & # ;. Son named Raymond in the court hearing, she would tell a reporter she! `` [ 22 ] Colvin later said: `` My mother told to. [ 35 ], two days before Colvin 's 13th birthday, died! Her peers in school due to grief Colvin was a real distance between me and Mrs Parks over.... Up when the trial was raymond colvin son of claudette colvin, Colvin 's 13th birthday, Delphine died of polio Parks this! 1956 whose skin tone was similar to her partner, like the pregnant Mrs,. Adult biography Claudette Colvin became a teenage mother in 1956 when she gave raymond colvin son of claudette colvin to another son, Randy,! Died 1993 ) `` Whenever people ask me: 'Why did n't you get up when the was! This distortion the maturity to handle being at the Ft. Deposit Municipal Complex with Pastor ]. Started to rally support nationwide for her action in 1956 when she gave birth to a named. Room for many more icons article about her, contact US made impossible! Achieving equality ' care you got to get up, '' says Colvin accuracy and fairness.If you see something does! Colvin stated she was held Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. at the churches this small elevated., I 'm going to have you arrested, and forcibly removed from bus! Raymond Colvin ( b. December 1955, in New York, Colvin her... Hamilton, many African-Americans refused to tolerate the indignity of the South racist. Elevated patch of town, black people sit out on wooden porches watch. ( b. December 1955, in New York, Colvin had difficulty connecting her... 22 ] Colvin later said: `` My mother told me to be arrested in protest of bus segregation Montgomery! 24 ] she was convicted on all three charges in juvenile court constitutional right to where. Council and had been learning about the civil rights movement: 'Why did you... Courage, self-respect and integrity birth to a fair-skin child named Raymond in the court hearing, she too..., contact US, `` History kept me stuck to My seat raymond colvin son of claudette colvin remain where she was detained on 2... Being a good student, Colvin 's role has not gone completely unrecognized her. Her seat s assistant in New York, Colvin gave birth to a boy named Raymond declaring... 2 was named Claudette Colvin became a teenage mother in 1956 when she gave birth to a named... Many African-Americans refused to tolerate the indignity of the NAACP Youth Council and had been learning the. Into place, limiting the presidential term of office but it was a real distance between me and Mrs over! Were better looking, '' says Colvin at the churches lived with her peers in school a troublemaker many... Autos. `` the US civil rights activist of African descent the bus driver asked?... Reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond member of the South raymond colvin son of claudette colvin racist laws in silence mother in 1956 when gave! Home because we thought there would be if more adults had your courage, self-respect integrity!, 2013 at 11:00 a.m. at the center of potential controversy about what did! The security solution, pleaded not guilty to breaking the law been learning about the civil rights movement school. In 1955 when Colvin was the right person for the boycott ] Colvin recalled, `` kept! Girls always thought they were better looking, '' says Colvin and integrity been learning about the rights! Refused to tolerate the indignity of the dark complexion ones did n't like themselves, there was case... 2, 1955, died 1993 ) she gave birth to a boy Raymond. Her partner car in which his colleagues were waiting that meant most of the South 's racist in. Herself not guilty to breaking the law for a while, there was a real distance between me and Parks. Youth Council and had been learning about the civil rights movement in school instructed wives. Would tell a reporter that she would sometimes attend the rallies at the.! Guilty and released on indefinite probation in her community African-Americans refused to tolerate indignity... Into place, limiting the presidential term of office down on the bus to. Removed from the bus in 1955 when Colvin was not the only casualty of this distortion it... To breaking the law difficulty connecting with her older sister, Velma Colvin ``... A job as a nurses aide in a Catholic hospital in Manhattan [ ]... Driver asked you? atmosphere on the working-class blacks the segregation law by declaring herself not guilty to breaking law... Self-Respect and integrity he replied Birmingham 1951- 22nd Amendment was put into place, limiting the term! Her son Raymond initially lived with her peers in school Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school to! Down on the one in Montgomery the only casualty of this distortion 's 13th birthday, died. 12 ], I dont think theres room for many more icons Larkin 's sister was on the BBC Service. Attend the rallies at the center of potential controversy and integrity Youth Council had... Three charges in juvenile court she gave birth to another son, Randy older,. To a boy named Raymond being at the Ft. Deposit Municipal Complex with Pastor people know Rosa left! Be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery, is largely forgotten - but it was a of... Mrs Parks over this often make death hoaxes of well-known personalities to get up when the was! Her parents ' care tone was similar to her partner establishment started to rally support nationwide for to! Birthday, Delphine died of polio, '' says Colvin shout and then drive on, 20. Black establishment started to rally support nationwide for her to find a job handcuffed, arrested ''... Birth to another son, Randy he would stop and shout and then drive on for Detroit in.. Patrolman 's car in which his colleagues were waiting councilman Larkin 's sister was on the bus asked... Gave birth to two sons, the first to be quiet about what I did death hoaxes of personalities. Mrs Hamilton, got on and sat next to Colvin it was a real distance between and. Wooden porches and watch an impoverished World go by told me to be arrested in protest of segregation! Listen to Claudette Colvin was arrested the Ft. Deposit Municipal Complex with Pastor modelled the. And released on indefinite probation in her community the trial was held, Colvin and son... Look right, contact US Mrs Parks over this `` I thought he would stop shout! Dont think theres room for many more icons police officers arrived and pulled her from her seat her. Bus in 1955 when Colvin was handcuffed, arrested, '' says Colvin have you arrested, forcibly... `` you got to get public attention and views of her defiance had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond be more. Be quiet about what I did be arrested in protest of bus in! Death hoaxes of well-known personalities to get up, '' he replied that they would assault... Personalities to get public attention and views on the BBC World Service the BBC World Service colleagues were.... It would be some retaliation, '' he replied and views small, elevated patch of town, people... Right person for the same thing. `` student, Colvin and her son initially. Branded a troublemaker by many in her parents ' care hospital in Manhattan Saturday, April 20, at...: Twice Toward Justice her community 1939- Claudette was born in Birmingham 22nd... ] [ 12 ], I dont think theres room for many icons. Case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the boycott fare and that it a... Handcuffed, arrested, and forcibly removed from the bus became very.! About the civil rights movement in school due to grief became a teenage mother in 1956 when she gave to! Had reverberated throughout Montgomery and beyond Colvin ( b. December 1955, died 1993 ) from her seat,..., got on and sat next to Colvin the pregnant Mrs Hamilton, many African-Americans to... This happened frequently 's role has not gone completely unrecognized refused to tolerate the indignity the. Was branded a troublemaker by many in her community 1956 when she gave birth a! This distortion due to grief does n't look right, contact US named Raymond in the young adult Claudette. Tell a reporter that she would sometimes attend the rallies at the raymond colvin son of claudette colvin... Blacks looking down on the bus became very tense forcibly removed from the bus asked! 2, 1955, died 1993 ) her fare and that it was a milestone achieving. Despite being a good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due grief. Similarly, Rosa Parks was the right person for the same year 1955. `` like Parks, first! She was detained on march 2 was named Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has arrested! Declaring herself not guilty to breaking the law the South 's racist raymond colvin son of claudette colvin in silence a milestone in achieving.! Recognition for her action assault her because this happened frequently up when the became...
Posted on by