Claudette Colvin – February 19, 2021

Claudette Colvin, a nurse’s aide and Civil Rights Movement activist, was born on September 5, 1939 in Birmingham, Alabama. Although Rosa Parks is well- known for her refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Ala. However, 9 months before Rosa Park, 15 years old Claudette Colvin, a student from a black high school in Montgomery, had refused to move from her bus seat when asked. On March 2, 1955, 15-year-old Colvin, while riding on a segregated city bus, made the fateful decision that would make her a pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. She had been sitting far behind the seats already reserved for whites, and although a city ordinance allowed bus drivers to enforce segregation, blacks could not be asked to give up a seat in the black section of the bus for a white person when it was crowded. However, this provision of the local law was usually ignored. Colvin was asked by the driver to give up her seat on the crowded bus for a white passenger who had just boarded. She refused. Other African-Americans had previously refused to give their seats to white passengers but what made her refusal so courageous was her young age and she lacked the Civil Rights training that Rosa Parks had. Colvin wanted to get a lawyer and she wanted to fight for her constitutional rights. Colvin was promptly dragged off the bus, arrested, taken to the city jail, and was charged with disturbing the peace, breaking the city’s segregation ordinance, and assaulting policemen. She went to Montgomery juvenile court on March 18, 1955 and was represented by Fred Gray, an African American lawyer from the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Although she maintained her innocence on the three charges, she was found guilty. The court sentenced her to indefinite probation and declared her to be a ward of the state. The Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) looked into her case and initially raised money to appeal her conviction. The NAACP briefly considered using Colvin's case to challenge the segregation laws, but they decided against it because of her age. She also had become pregnant and they thought an unwed mother would attract too much negative attention in a public legal battle. On May 6, 1955 her case was moved to the Montgomery Circuit Court, where two of the three charges against Colvin were dropped. Colvin’s charge of allegedly assaulting the arresting police officers was maintained. In 1956, about a year after Colvin refused to give up her seat, Gray filed the landmark federal lawsuit Browder v. Gayle. This case ruled the segregation on public transportation in Alabama was unconstitutional and ended segregation on public transportation in the state of Alabama. The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of school. Her reputation also made it impossible for her to find a job. Eventually, Colvin moved to New York City, where she worked as a nurse's aide at a Manhattan nursing home until she retired in 2004.