Montgomery Bus Boycott
Claudette Colvin
Let’s begin with Rosa McCauley Parks, born in
1913. She was the granddaughter of slaves, whose grandfather taught her courage
during a wave of racial violence in 1919. He sat on his porch with a shotgun
telling young Rosa that he dared the
“Ku-Kluxers” to come. She was soft-spoken but strong-willed and a great
student. When a white boy on roller skates tried to push her off the sidewalk,
she pushed back. His mother threatened to have her arrested. Another time she
threatened a white boy who taunted her on the way to school with a brick. Mrs.
Parks reflected later, “I’d rather be lynched than run over by them.”
In 1931, she met Raymond Parks, a self-taught,
politically active barber, and she married him in 1932. He was known for his
willingness to stand up to racism, and was the first man she deemed radical
enough to marry. He was active in the Scottsboro Nine case, in which nine young
men had been falsely accused of rape and eight were sentenced to death. The
Communist Party of America
She and Raymond had thought the NAACP was too
elitist and cautious, but after learning a friend was involved she went to her
first meeting in December, 1943. She was the only woman there, was asked to
take notes, and was elected group Secretary that day, a position she’d hold for
the next 12 years. As secretary, she recorded countless cases of unfair
treatment, brutality, sexual violence, and lynchings, absorbing the pain of her
community.
In 1942, E.D. Nixon came to the Parks home to
register them to vote. A member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
union, he had led a voter registration drive in 1940 when he increased the
rolls of African American voters from 31 to more than 700. In 1945, he ran for
President of the NAACP, the first working class man to do so. Mrs. Parks said
that while he was not formally educated, he was sophisticated in ways that
matter. She considered him the first person beside her family and Raymond who
was truly committed to freedom.
Through the NAACP, Mrs. Parks attended NAACP
events in Jacksonville , Atlanta ,
and Washington D.C. Montgomery
She did, engaging teens to directly challenge
segregation in the libraries and write letters to elected officials. And she
also took on a larger role in the NAACP. In 1947, she joined the executive
committee of the state NAACP, in 1948 spoke at the state convention, and she
was elected State Secretary. In 1949 with her support, E.D. Nixon was elected
President of the State NAACP. When the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme
Court ruling came down in 1954, Mr. Nixon and Mrs. Parks marched 23 African
American students to the white school in town. They also took the lead on a
Voter Registration drive in the 2nd Congressional District in 1954.
… Claudette Colvin, the 15 year-old secretary of
her [Rosa’s] Youth Council, was on her [Rosa ’s] mind. On
March 2, 1955, Ms. Colvin refused to move to the back of the bus and was arrested.
Her arrest outraged the community. While Mrs. Parks and Mrs. Durr raised money
for her case, the male leaders in town were concerned that she was too dark
skinned, poor, and young to be a sympathetic plaintiff to challenge
segregation. The police also charged her with assaulting officers rather than
with violating segregation laws, which limited their ability to appeal
(Schmitz 2-4).
Few Americans who
know that Rosa Parks’s refusal in 1955 to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery , Alabama
[Claudette] Colvin was the first to really challenge the
law. … She remembers taking the bus home
from high school on March 2, 1955, as clear as if it were yesterday.
It was Negro history month, and at her segregated
school they had been studying black leaders like Harriet Tubman, the runaway
slave who led more than 70 slaves to freedom through the network of safe houses
known as the Underground Railroad. They were also studying about Sojourner
Truth, a former slave who became an abolitionist and women's rights activist.
The class had also been talking about the
injustices they were experiencing daily under the Jim Crow segregation laws,
like not being able to eat at a lunch counter.
"We couldn't try on clothes," Colvin
says. "You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot
... and take it to the store. Can you imagine all of that in my mind? 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"
(Alder 2).
Here is Claudette
Colvin’s account of her terrifying experience, as told by Phillip Hoose.
CLAUDETTE: One of them said to the driver in a
very angry tone, "Who is it?" The motorman pointed at me. I heard him
say, "That's nothing new . . . I've had trouble with that 'thing'
before." He called me a "thing." They came to me and stood over
me and one said, "Aren't you going to get up?" I said, "No,
sir." He shouted "Get up" again. I started crying, but I felt
even more defiant. I kept saying over and over, in my high-pitched voice,
"It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my
fare, it's my constitutional right!" I knew I was talking back to a white
policeman, but I had had enough.
One cop grabbed one of my hands and his partner
grabbed the other and they pulled me straight up out of my seat. My books went
flying everywhere. I went limp as a baby—I was too smart to fight back. They
started dragging me backwards off the bus. One of them kicked me. I might have
scratched one of them because I had long nails, but I sure didn't fight back. I
kept screaming over and over, "It's my constitutional right!" I
wasn't shouting anything profane—I never swore, not then, not ever. I was
shouting out my rights.
It just killed me to leave the bus. I hated to
give that white woman my seat when so many black people were standing. I was
crying hard. The cops put me in the back of a police car and shut the door.
They stood outside and talked to each other for a minute, and then one came
back and told me to stick my hands out the open window. He handcuffed me and
then pulled the door open and jumped in the backseat with me. I put my knees
together and crossed my hands over my lap and started praying.
All ride long they swore at me and ridiculed me.
They took turns trying to guess my bra size. They called me "nigger
bitch" and cracked jokes about parts of my body. I recited the Lord's
Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm over and over in my head, trying to push back
the fear. I assumed they were taking me to juvenile court because I was only
fifteen. I was thinking, Now I'm gonna be picking cotton, since that's how they
punished juveniles—they put you in a school out in the country where they made
you do field work during the day.
But we were going in the wrong direction. They
kept telling me I was going to Atmore, the women's penitentiary. Instead, we
pulled up to the police station and they led me inside. More cops looked up
when we came in and started calling me "Thing" and "Whore."
They booked me and took my fingerprints.
Then they put me back in the car and drove me to
the city jail—the adult jail. Someone led me straight to a cell without giving
me any chance to make a phone call. He opened the door and told me to get
inside. He shut it hard behind me and turned the key. The lock fell into place
with a heavy sound. It was the worst sound I ever heard. It sounded final. It
said I was trapped.
When he went away, I looked around me: three bare
walls, a toilet, and a cot. Then I fell down on my knees in the middle of the
cell and started crying again. I didn't know if anyone knew where I was or what
had happened to me. I had no idea how long I would be there. I cried and I put
my hands together and prayed like I had never prayed before.
…
MEANWHILE, schoolmates who had been on the bus had
run home and telephoned Claudette's mother at the house where she worked as a
maid. Girls went over and took care of the lady's three small children so that
Claudette's mother could leave. Mary Ann Colvin called Claudette's pastor, the
Reverend H.H. Johnson. He had a car, and together they sped to the police
station.
…
CLAUDETTE: When they led Mom back, there I was in
a cell. I was cryin' hard, and then Mom got upset, too. When she saw me, she
didn't bawl me out, she just asked, "Are you all right, Claudette?"
Reverend Johnson bailed me out and we drove home.
By the time we got to King Hill, word had spread everywhere. All our neighbors
came around, and they were just squeezing me to death. I felt happy and proud.
I had been talking about getting our rights ever since Jeremiah Reeves was
arrested, and now they knew I was serious. Velma, Q.P. and Mary Ann's daughter,
who was living with us at the time, kept saying it was my squeaky little voice
that had saved me from getting beat up or raped by the cops.
But I was afraid that night, too. I had stood up
to a white bus driver and two white cops. I had challenged the bus law. There
had been lynchings and cross burnings for that kind of thing. Wetumpka Highway Montgomery
But worried or not, I felt proud. I had stood up
for our rights. I had done something a lot of adults hadn't done. On the ride
home from jail, coming over the viaduct, Reverend Johnson had said something to
me I'll never forget. He was an adult who everyone respected and his opinion
meant a lot to me. "Claudette," he said, "I'm so proud of you.
Everyone prays for freedom. We've all been praying and praying. But you're
different—you want your answer the next morning. And I think you just brought
the revolution to Montgomery
Passages cited:
Adler,
Margot. “Before Rosa Parks, There Was
Claudette Colvin.” NPR. March 15, 2009. Web.
< https://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-there-was-claudette-colvin.>
Hoose,
Phillip. “Excerpt: 'Claudette Colvin:
Twice Toward Justice'.” NPR. March
15, 2009. Web. <https://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-there-was-claudette-colvin.>
Schmitz,
Paul. “How Change Happens: The Real
Story of Mrs. Rosa Parks & The Montgomery
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