Claudette Colvin
| Claudette Colvin | |
|---|---|
Colvin in 1953
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| Born |
September 5, 1939 Montgomery, Alabama, U.S. |
| Residence | The Bronx, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Civil rights activist, nurse aide |
| Years active | 1969–2004 as nurse aide |
| Children | 2; one deceased |
Claudette Colvin (born September 5, 1939) was a pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in segregated Montgomery, Alabama, nine months prior to Rosa Parks.
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 she 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 their 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 many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort because she was a teenager who was reportedly pregnant by a married man. However, she actually did not become pregnant until later. Words like "feisty", "mouthy", and "emotional" were used to describe her, while her older counterpart Rosa Parks was viewed as being calm, well-mannered, and studious. Because of the social norms of the time and her youth, the NAACP leaders worried about using her to symbolize their boycott.
Claudette Colvin: "Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all."
Colvin was born September 5, 1939, and was adopted by C. P. Colvin and Mary Anne Colvin. Her father mowed lawns, and her mother worked as a maid. Claudette Colvin grew up in a poor black neighborhood of Montgomery, Alabama. In 1943, at the age of four, she 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 in order to compare them. Seeing this, her mother slapped her face and told her that she was not allowed to touch the white boys.
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