Claudette Colvin

She was just fifteen when she boarded the bus with a few friends for the ride home from school on a cloudy early March afternoon in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama.

As the ride went on, the bus became more crowded. Eventually, the bus driver told her and her friends they needed to move farther back to make room for a white passenger.

Her friends obliged. She refused.

Her civics teacher had spoken that day about the Constitution, rights, and heroism of people such as Harriet Tubman. She had soaked it all in. And it stirred something. “It’s my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it’s my constitutional right,” she told the driver.

But it was not an argument for that time and place. Two police officers boarded the bus, dragged her from her seat, and arrested her.

“I was really afraid,” she said about being taken to the adult jail.

Her minister and parents bailed her out. Then she and her family stayed up all night in fear of what might happen.

But Claudette wasn’t ready to let it go. She wanted to fight. She was right — morally, for her time; and historically, for what would come next.

Yet civil rights leaders didn’t believe they were ready, and that she was the best person to build a movement around. So they waited, and nine months later, after Rosa Parks went through a similar experience, the leaders believed the time was right to fight the injustice.

Perhaps they had been right. After a lengthy, grueling boycott that was led by a young Martin Luther King Jr., change came to Montgomery. And Rosa Parks is the one best remembered for being arrested for refusing to give up her seat.

But history never forgot the fifteen-year-old who endured the same. Today, we remember Claudette Colvin.

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Sources:

• “Before Rosa Parks, A Teenager Defied Segregation On An Alabama Bus.” All Things Considered, https://www.wnyc.org/story/before-rosa-parks-a-teenager-defied-segregation-on-an-alabama-bus/

• “Civil Rights – A Seat for Everyone.” Seashore Trolley Museum, https://trolleymuseum.org/exhibits-at-seashore/seat-everyone-mobile-bus-exhibit/

• “The Women Behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott.” By LA Johnson, Karen Grigsby Bates, Barrett Golding, Courtney Stein, Diba Mohtasham, Jess Kung. NPR, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2023/03/22/1161664788/the-women-behind-the-montgomery-bus-boycott