Claudette Colvin

Claudette Colvin (born the September 5th 1939) is an American black woman of Alabama. In 1955, at the 15 years age, it refused to leave its seat to a White in a bus of Montgomery, in violations of the local laws. Its arrest preceded nine months that of the activist of the Civic right Rosa Parks, which took place on February 1st 1955.

Colvin was then a high-school girl. Its family not having a car, it had recourse to the bus to go to the school. The March 2nd 1955, it got into the bus in the same place as Parks a few months later to the return of the school and refused shortly after to leave its place to a white man. She had sat with two rows of the fire exit when four White went up and that the driver ordered to him to rise, just as to four other black passengers. In front of its refusal, it was expelled of the bus by two police officers who reflect it in a state of arrest.

" The bus became crammed and I remember him bus driver looking in his rear view mirror asking him to rise of his seat, which it did not do pas" told one of his/her classmates of then, Annie Larkins Price. " She did not say anything. She just continued to look by the window. She decided this day that she would not move pas."

Price testified in favor of Colvin in front of the juvenile court, where Colvin was condemned for violation of the laws on the segregation and aggression. " There was no aggression, " known as Price.

Colvin was slapped, stopped and thrown without care out of the bus. She exclaimed that its rights constututionnels were violated. At that time, Colvin was member of the Council of youth of the NAACP and she was advised by Rosa Parks.

E.D. Nixon, the leader of then of the local section of Montgomery of the NAACP, awaited such a case to defy the segregation in the buses and the Jura to help Colvin after his/her father had paid the guarantee. The father of Colvin mowed the grass and his/her mother was waitress. They was pious people but who lived in King Hill, the poor district of Montgomery. The police force which stopped it and imprisoned it, also showed the teenager to have uttered insults, which Colvin denied.

Many black persons in charge, whose Rosa Parks, collected money for the defense of Colvin. Local black leaders pensèrenet whereas his case was adapted to traverse all the way to the Supreme court, within the framework of the fight against the segregationist laws of the States of the South. But shortly after its arrest, Colvin fell pregnant from a married man older than it. The local black leaders felt that this moral transgression would not scandalize only the very religious black community, but which it would make suspect also Colvin to the eyes of the white sympathizers. In particular, they provided that the white press would use the illegitimate pregnancy of Colvin to mine its statute of victim and any consecutive boycott of the buses.

Certain historians have advanced that the local black leaders came mainly from the average layers of the company and that they were not at ease with the modest milieu of Colvin. Indeed, before the case of Colvin, the NAACP had rejected other cases which did not seem to him enough solid to attack the legislation.

The May 11th 1956, Colvin answered before the Federal court of Montgomery of its acts in the bus. This same year, it gave rise to her Raymond son who was so pale of skin (like his/her father) that people the accusèrenet to have a white child. It left Alabama for New York in 1958 when it worked during 30 years of night as nurse. She took her retirement in 2004.

Raymond became doped and alcoholic and died of one heart attack at the 37 years age in the apartment of Colvin. Of its life and its dreams to become lawyer, she says " Yes, I am disappointed At least (...), my small children will not have to suffer what I have souffert."

According to the Montgomery Advertiser , Colvin says that she does not regret its decision not to be raised. " I am proud of what I did. I think that what I have fact was a spark and which that has pris."

Internal bonds

Rosa Parks
Mary Louise Smith
Irene Morgan

External bonds

She Had has off Dream
Daybreak Freedom: The Montgomery Drunk Boycott (Prefaces)
Daybreak off Freedom: The Montgomery Drunk Boycott (Excerpt)
BROWDER v. GAYLE: The Women Before Rosa Parks
" In The Shadow off Rosa Parks: “Unsung Hero” Off Civil Rights Movement Speaks Out" by Vanessa of Torre, Cardinal The Inquirer , January 20,2005
She Would Not Be Moved (Article)
Year asterisk, not has star, off black history

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