Claudette Colvin, Rest in Power!

Her name should be, and will be, revered as Rosa Parks–and Parks would agree.

Rosa Parks is known for her defiance of the segregation of the Montgomery, Alabama system when she was arrested for not moving the back of a bus when ordered to on December 1, 1955. Nine months and a day earlier on March 2, 1955 however, another also pushed back but did not get similar recognition until later in life.

Claudette Colvin was 15 years old when she boarded a bus home from school and when the ()hite section of the bus filled and the bus driver ordered her and two others Black teens to move to the back and her to give her seat to a White woman she refused. She argued with the driver and others who came to her defense, but ultimately two police officers removed her from the bus and arrested her, roughing her up in the process, Black riders said she “fought like a tigress.” Colvin denies this saying she went limp when she was arrested.  The officers insulted her as they drove to the police station, making crude remarks about her body cause her to be concerned that they would rape her. Curiously, she was charged with assaulting the officers as well as disturbing and breaking the segregation law.

At her trial, she was convicted of the assault charge but dropped disturbing the peace and the in particular segregation violation charge, which would mean she could not directly challenge the segregation law. Civil rights leaders, particularly from the NAACP, were outraged about the arrest and had begun to organize and Rosa Parks along with attorney Clifford and Virginia Durr a White couple, raised funds for Colvin’s case. Unfortunately Colvin was young and seen as someone who lived on the wrong side of town and “feisty” and “uncontrollable” and civil rights leaders deemed her not the right kind of plaintiff to organize around. It is not true that she was dropped as the face of the movement because she was pregnant when she was arrested. Her pregnancy was not until the summer.

Rosa Parks stayed by her side regardless of becoming her mentor. Colvin was already a member of the NAACP Youth Council but Parks made Colvin secretary of the council. Colvin eventually  was one of the plaintiffs in the federal case, Browder v Gayle, filed in February 1956 that ultimately led to the desegregation of Montgomery’s buses.

Claudette Colvin died on Tuesday, according to Ashley D. Roseboro of the Claudette Colvin Legacy Foundation who said she died of natural causes under hospice in Texas at the age of 86. She was predeceased by her son Raymond and is survived by her other son Randy, an accountant in Atlanta and four grandchildren.

Colvin attended Booker T. Washington High School in Montgomery and became active in politics after her classmate, jazz drummer, Jeremiah Reeves was arrested in 1952 for the rape of a White woman, and after a two-day trial was convicted, despite questionable evidence, including possible coerced confession. Colvin’s activism inspired her to write a paper in school about the problems of segregation in downtown Montgomery. Reeves was executed in 1958.

Colvin worked in a nursing home in Manhattan for 35 years before retiring in 2004, She often said she was not angry that she did not get more recognition; rather, she was disappointed. It was only in recent days that she and her contributions were recognized. In 2010, the street Colvin lived on when she was a young girl was named Claudette Colvin Drive in her honor and in 2019, a statue of Rosa Parks unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama, included four granite markers near the statue to honor the four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, including Colvin.

In 2021, Colvin, petitioned to have her juvenile criminal record expunged and Montgomery County Juvenile Judge Calvin Williams signed the order to expunge her records on Nov. 24, his office for good cause “for what has since been recognized as a courageous act on her behalf and on behalf of a community of affected people,” he wrote in the order.

“My reason for doing it is because I get a chance to tell my grandchildren, my great grandchildren what life was like in segregated America … The hardship and intimidation that took place in those years and the reason I took a stand to defy the segregated law,” Colvin said at the time.