Claudette Colvin
Written By: Barbara Bullen
“When racism rears its ugly head against you should you take action to stop the pain you feel of being discriminated against the laws that aren’t right the laws to protect only whites!”
When one hears about the Civil Rights era, it immediately brings to mind activists; Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks and organizations like the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. There are also many other leaders and activists that are in history books throughout the United States and the World. In 1955, a teenager stood up for her rights and was arrested even before the infamous Rosa Parks stand. Rosa Parks, who worked for the NAACP as the secretary for the Montgomery Chapter, was arrested for not getting up from her seat for a White man on a bus.
Claudette Colvin, a Black teenager attended Booker T. Washington High School, only 15 at the time, didn’t want her constitutional rights violated even though segregation on public transit was the law. Whites were to be seated in the front of the bus, and if there were no seats left for Whites than Blacks had to get up from their seats at the back for Whites to be seated. Colvin lived in troubled times; times when segregation divided the nation so that Blacks took a back seat to the lives of Whites. Segregation was the norm and the daily lives of all who traveled the public transit until Colvin took a stand.
In Montgomery, Alabama, Colvin is said to be a pioneer, one who led the way and helped end segregation on public transit. When she was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested on March 2, 1955, her attorney, Fred Gray, along with four other plaintiffs filed a federal case, in Federal District Court, February 1, 1956, Browder vs. Gayle, to challenge segregation on public transit. A three-judge panel found the law unconstitutional which was appealed to the Supreme Court where it upheld the state court ruling, finding the law unconstitutional.
“Browder v. Gayle 142 F. Supp. 707 (M.D. Ala. 1956) Decided Jun 5, 1956 709 *709 RIVES, Circuit Judge. Statement of the Case. The purpose of this action is to test the constitutionality of both the statutes of the State of Alabama and the ordinances of the City of Montgomery which require the segregation of the white and colored races on the motor buses of the Montgomery City Lines, Inc., *711 a common carrier of passengers in said City and its police jurisdiction.
1 2 711 1 Title 48, § 301(31a, b, c), Code of Alabama of 1940, as amended, which provide: “§ 301(31a). Separate accommodations for white and colored races. — All passenger stations in this state operated by any motor transportation company shall have separate waiting rooms or space and separate ticket windows for the white and colored races, but such accommodations for the races shall be equal. All motor transportation companies or operators of vehicles carrying passengers for hire in this state, whether intrastate or interstate passengers, shall at all times provide equal but separate accommodations on each vehicle for the white and colored races. The conductor or agent of the motor transportation company in charge of any vehicle is authorized and required to assign each passenger to the division of the vehicle designated for the race to which the passenger belongs; and, if the passenger refuses to occupy the division to which he is assigned, the conductor or agent may refuse to carry the passenger on the vehicle; and, for such refusal, neither the conductor or agent of the motor transportation company nor the motor transportation company shall be liable in damages. Any motor transportation company or person violating the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, shall be fined not more than five hundred dollars for each offense; and each day’s violation of this section shall constitute a separate offense. The provisions of this section shall be administered and enforced by the Alabama public service commission in the manner in which provisions of the Alabama Motor Carrier Act of 1939 are administered and enforced. (1945, p. 731, appvd. July 6, 1945.)”
For the complete case see below: https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Browder-v.-Gayle.pdf
According to Jonathan Gold in his article, “The Browder in Browder v. Gayle. On April 29, 1955, Aurelia Browder, like so many other black residents of Montgomery, was mistreated on a city bus. According to her testimony in the civil case, she was forced by the bus driver “to get up and stand to let a white man and a white lady sit down.” Three other plaintiffs, Mary Louise Smith, Claudette Colvin and Susie McDonald, had reported similar mistreatment. The cumulative effect of these “demeaning, wretched, intolerable impositions and conditions,” as boycott organizer Jo Ann Robinson referred to them, inspired Montgomery’s black community to begin developing plans for a boycott that eventually began after the arrest of Rosa Park.”
For further reading: https://www.learningforjustice.org/sites/default/files/general/TT53%20Browder%20v.%20Gayle.pdf
“Nine months after Claudette Colvin’s arrest, local activist Rosa Parks took similar action. She refused to give up her bus seat to a white rider and got arrested. Colvin’s actions raised awareness, but Parks’s actions set off a boycott of the Montgomery bus lines. Thousands of Black residents rode the bus to work, often for white employers. After Parks’s arrest, though, they refused to ride for an entire year (National Youth Summit 2020).” https://americanhistory.si.edu/sites/default/files/file-uploader/NYS%20Case%20Study%E2%80%93Student%20Kit%20FINAL4.pdf
Colvin’s case unlike Rosa Parks’s “was dropped by civil rights campaigners because Colvin was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings.[6][7] It is now widely accepted that Colvin was not accredited by civil rights campaigners at the time due to her circumstances. Rosa Parks stated: “If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. The record of her arrest and adjudication of delinquency was expunged by the district court in 2021, with the support of the district attorney for the county in which the charges were brought more than 66 years before.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudette_Colvin
When people, no matter their race, color or creed cannot take any more discriminatory and racist acts towards them, their only recourse is to take action. Humanity needs people like Colvin and the others who took a stand for their rights despite the consequences.
