Black History Month: Daily Updates

Claudette Colvin (1939 -) Nurse and civil rights activist

Many biographical articles about Claudette Colvin share the same features - the title features the phrase “Before Rosa Parks” and the article starts with the assertion that the reader has not heard of Claudette Colvin, the 15-year old Montgomery, Alabama student who refused to relinquish her seat nine months before Parks’ more famous refusal.

That Colvin’s name is not synonymous with the Montgomery Bus Boycott can be put down to respectability politics. In his book Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, Phillip Hoose describes where Colvin grew up in north Montgomery: “King Hill, as the neighborhood was called, consisted of three unpaved streets lined with red shotgun shacks and frame houses … Toilets were out of doors… King Hill had a citywide reputation as a depressed and dangerous neighborhood” (p. 15). Or as Colvin herself said, "Middle-class blacks looked down on King Hill.”

That Colvin was poor, young, and wore her hair in braids when her classmates were using “straightening combs and pomade,” may have been enough for the leaders of the civil rights movement in Montgomery to look elsewhere for a standard-bearer, but Colvin became pregnant not long after her arrest. Rosa Parks, who ultimately became the symbol of quiet dignity and resistance to racial segregation, said of Colvin’s pregnancy, "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."

Nevertheless, Colvin was one of the five original plaintiffs and a “star witness” in the Browder v. Gayle challenge to public bus segregation, a case that would ultimately go to the Supreme Court and end Alabama’s segregated bus policy.

In Their Words

“…as a teenager, I kept thinking, Why don’t the adults around here just say something? Say it so that they know we don’t accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’ And I did.”

“I just couldn’t move. History had me glued to the seat”

Learn More

READ: “She Would Not Be Moved” - Gary Younge, The Guardian (Dec. 2000)

LISTEN: Claudette Colvin: “History Had Me Glued To The Seat” - Radio Diaries (11 min)

WATCH: Michele Norris Interviews Civil Rights Pioneer, Claudette Colvin - Embrace Ambition Summit (17 min)