Excerpts from Freedom’s Children – Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories by Ellen Levine

Claudette Colvin was fifteen years old in 1955. On her own she defied the segregation laws on the Montgomery city buses when she refused to give up her seat to a white person. She was arrested, found guilty, and fined.

When I grew up, the South was segregated. Very much so. Your parents had taught you that you had a place. You knew that much. In the city you had the signs. You have to stay here, you have to drink out of this fountain, you can’t eat at this counter.

…It bothered me when I got old enough to understand. You could buy dry goods at the five-and-ten- cent stores…You could buy, but you couldn’t sit down and eat there. When I realized that, I was really angry.

…At that time, teenagers didn’t like to ride the special school bus too much. If you had to stay after school for band practice or a rehearsal, or hang around for after-school activities, and you missed the special, you still could ride on your school pass, but on the regular bus.

On the regular buses there were signs on the side saying “Colored” with an arrow this way and “White” with an arrow this way. The motorman could adjust the signs. He could direct people to sit where he wanted them to.

You knew that you weren’t supposed to sit opposite a white person, or in front of a white person. The number of seats varied in different communities. Depending on whether there was a larger black population, there could be the first two or four rows reserved for white people.

On March 2, 1955, I got on the bus … I went to the middle. No white people were on the bus at that time…Then the bus began to fill up. White people got on and began to stare at me. The bus motorman asked me to get up. .. A white lady was sitting across the aisle from me, and it was against the law for you to sit in the same aisle with a white person.

The bus driver looked back through the rearview mirror and told me to get up. I didn’t… When I didn’t get up, he didn’t move the bus. He said before he’d drive on, I’d have to get up. People were saying, “Why don’t you get up?”… Then a girl said,”She doesn’t have to. Only one thing you have to do is stay black and die.”

The white people were complaining. The driver stopped the bus and said, “This can’t go on. I’m going to call the cops.”

…The traffic patrolman told the bus driver that he had no jurisdiction, and that he would have to call the regular policemen. When they got on the bus, I was speaking so fast…The busman just kept saying, “She won’t get up.”

I kept saying, “He has no right…this is my constitutional right…you have no right to do this!” The police knocked my books down. One took one wrist, the other grabbed the other, and they were pulling me of the bus, just like you see on TV now. I was really struggling. They put me in the car. Somebody must have said they didn’t have handcuffs on me and I might run away, so they put handcuffs on me. And then they took me to City Hall.

…Mama knew Fred Grey, the attorney. And Mama let him and E.D. Nixon handle it. Fred Gray told me to participate in a group that was run by Rosa Parks. This was before she was arrested, before the boycott.