Black History Month Heroes You Should Know: Claudette Colvin
Happy Black History Month! This is the third blog of a series of blogs called “Black History Month Heroes You Should Know”. This series will be a collection of my research into little-known Black Americans who have made history in one way or another (or multiple ways!).
The focus of today’s blog is Claudette Colvin, the young woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus nine months before Rosa Parks did in 1955. She was the first person arrested for resisting and at the time, she was only 15!
This is her story.
Grew Up as a Member of the NAACP Youth Council
Colvin was raised by her great uncle and aunt in Montgomery, Alabama. She attended Booker T. Washington High School and joined the NAACP Youth Council, where she grew close to her mentor, Rosa Parks! One of her dreams was to become President of the United States.
Made History at 15 Years Old
At 15 years old, Colvin was riding home from school on the bus. When a white woman could not find a seat, the bus driver demanded that Colvin and three other Black women get up and move to the back. The three other women moved, but Colvin stayed put. When asked in an interview about it, she said, “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” (NPR, 2009).
First Person to Be Arrested For Resisting
After she refused to get up, Colvin was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested by two policemen. Her charges were disturbing the peace, violating segregation laws, and assaulting a police officer, which never happened. She became the first person to be arrested for resisting nine months before Rosa Parks was. However, Colvin’s story is not told nearly as often. Of this, Colvin says civil rights leaders chose Rosa Parks to publicize for the movement because Parks was the respected secretary of the NAACP and Colvin was a pregnant teenager who didn’t have “good hair” or a lighter skin tone.
Represented By Fred Gray, Iconic Civil Rights Attorney
In court, Colvin and four other women were represented by Fred Gray, infamous civil rights attorney and preacher from Montgomery, Alabama. Initially, she was convicted of all three charges. But, after an appeal went through in 1955, the charges of disturbing the peace and violating segregation laws were dropped. Although, the charge of the assault on a police officer that never happened stayed.
Life After Activism
Colvin rarely told her story to anyone after Rosa Parks became the face of the Montgomery bus boycott. She found that her community viewed her as a troublemaker and started to slowly shun her away. Colvin eventually moved to New York City with her newborn son Raymond, where she got a job as a nurse aide in a retirement community. She worked there for 34 years until her retirement in 2004. Recently, she was honored for her activism by Congressman Joe Crowley and interviewed at the Tory Burch Foundation’s 2020 Embrace Ambition Summit. Read more about Claudette Colvin here and here.
Read another article from the “Black History Month Heroes You Should Know” blog series here.
