Everyone is familiar with Rosa Parks. However, nine months before Parks became famous for refusing to obey a bus driver’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger, 15 year-old Claudette Colvin (1939-), was arrested for the same offense in Montgomery, AL.
At that time, Colvin was a student at Booker T. Washington High School who relied on the city buses to get to school. On March 2, 1955, she boarded a bus and was sitting about two seats from the emergency exit when four white passengers boarded. The bus driver ordered her and three other black passengers to get up, but Colvin refused and was removed from the bus by two police officers who took her to jail.
A classmate at the time, Annie Larks Prince, recalled that the bus was getting crowded and the bus driver asked Colvin to get up out of her seat, but she didn’t. “She didn’t say anything. She just continued looking out the window. She decided on that day that she wasn’t going to move.”
Recounting that day, Colvin said she’d moved for white people before, but she was thinking of the slavery fighters she had read about recently during Negro History Week in February this time. “The spirit of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth was in me,” she said. “I didn’t get up.”
Colvin was handcuffed, arrested and forcibly removed from the bus while she screamed that her constitutional rights were being violated; at the time, Colvin was active in the NAACP’s Youth Council, under the advisement of Parks.
Colvin feels her disobedience was the spark for much of the movement’s fire: “She (Parks) made something out of what I started.”
Civil rights attorney Fred Gray always discusses Colvin when he speaks about the boycott and Parks; according to him, the Montgomery Bus Boycott and its place in history would have been vastly different without Colvin’s actions.
Shortly after her arrest, Colvin became pregnant and local black leaders felt this would scandalize the deeply religious black community. She was sentenced to probation for the ordinance violation and neighbors, students and others in the community began to think of Colvin as a troublemaker.
“They distanced themselves from me,” Colvin said of fellow students. “They didn’t want to be close to me because of my beliefs.” Colvin subsequently dropped out of school and she said, that, along with her pregnancy, was the reason they (black leaders) did not use her as the test case challenging segregation on city buses.
They wanted Parks to be the icon, but Colvin is glad she acted.
“She did what she had to do and made something of it,” she said.
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Concrete Loop will feature ‘Black History Spotlights’ each week. These features illustrate the achievements of black people through the years and submissions are welcome.
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Thanks for the post I never heard of her either I always knew others refused before rosa, thanks now she gets recognition before she passes away.
It hurts I never knew of her, but now I have something to tell my family/friends and even, hopefully, my future sons or daughters.
Glad you told her story, J!
major propz and please do Black history and not just (Black) American history
i read about this. i have a book called “amazing women in history” and the rosa parks story is in and they do mention this lady but not by name and only brief. i was disappointed when i read that what rosa parks did was a set up and was planned in advance. i hate to say rosa did not “just stay in her seat” it was planned and her husband did not want her to participate. he thought it would be dangerous. also this lady claudette covin was said to be pregnant at the time and did not have a husband and they did not want to use what happened to her to start the boycott. she was 15 and pregnant and that would not look good on paper. it was agreed upon that the one to refuse to give up her seat had to married, and also have a job. it would look better on paper. sad but true and that was the era they lived in. i am glad she has been recognized. sorry that it took so long. she should have gotten much and i believe more recognition as parks because like i said rosa’s was a set up. no disrespect to rosa because she was in the struggle along with her husband. it was rosa’s idea to be the one to do it. rosa was not a coward. but the truth is the truth, there is nothing we can do to change that. something great did come out of it.
wow, I just learned something!
I was hoping you all were going to get on this. I been gon for a min because I didnt like some of the comments content, but this is on point
@63
I agree. “Black American” history always has an air of subservience and confusion to it. It always seems to revolve around some type of struggle to concoct a relevance for ourselves in relation to white people. Real black history transcends all this contrived, orchestrated nonsense.
i knew about her also, i had to do research in school and found out about her, she was pregnant and her father was a alcoholic and some pp thought she wouldnt make a good person to spotlight on. its so much more the opublic dnt know about and its sad. just like medgar evers, which we hardly ever hear about him and countless others who are never mentioned.
Yep, i first learned about her 3yrs ago in college. I love how you are putting our history on blast. This is such a positive website!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Took a course taught by Julian Bond last spring @ Univ. of Virginia – we spent about 2 weeks talking about her role in the civil rights movement/bus boycott. Quite a class, and quite a lady; thanks for acknowledging her. This is why I love this site.
Thank you CL! I knew about her and I’m glad you spotlighted her because not a lot of people do. CL droppin celeb news and knowledge!!! LOVIN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks Concrete Loop for the real deal scoop on our history! 365BlacksAlive!
#33 Thanks for a new piece of Knowledge added to my frame of mind and AA history of thinking
And I heard something mentioned in the biopic about Rosa Parks-the one that Angela Bassett played the lead in…. they vaguely mentioned the young woman, but never said her name or anything. But, I heard and told this story to my lil’ sister about 4 years or so ago, back when that controversy about what Cedric the Entertainer’s character (in Barber Shop- Back in Business) said about Dr. King and white women
I am happy to hear her story about what happened to her and her not getting the praise and credit that Rosa Park got all these years is sad. I am disappointed in our people that she was forced to quit school…I really think the reason she wasnt given the praise is becasue she is darker than Rosa Parks doesnt have the long hair our people even then are so hung up on color and hair Its a sad thing I hear about it every other day myself I not a dark skin sista but I still deal with the issue because I am brown Im not light skin I dont have the hair Im just like her, Sista I think after all these years you deserve your CREDIT and an APPOLOGY for making you feel like you did something wrong by going to jail and having a baby at a young age ..
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