Claudette Colvin biography

Synopsis

Profile

Civil rights activist. Born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. Months before Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin stood up against segregation in Alabama in 1955. She was only 15 years old at the time. Colvin also served as a plaintiff in the landmark legal case, Browder v. Gayle, which helped end the practice of segregation on Montgomery public buses.

Growing up in one of Montgomery's poorer neighborhoods, Colvin studied hard at school. She earned mostly As in her classes and even aspired to become president one day. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was riding home on a city bus after school when a bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white passenger. She refused, saying "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, 'Sit down girl!' I was glued to my seat," she later told Newsweek.

Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city's segregation laws. For several hours, she sat in jail, completely terrified. "I was really afraid, because you just didn't know what white people might do at that time," Colvin later said. After her minister paid her bail, she went home where she and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People briefly considered using Colvin's case to challenge the segregation laws, but they decided against it because of her age. She also became pregnant around the time of her arrest, and they thought an unwed mother would attract too much negative attention in a public legal battle. Her son, Raymond, was born in December 1955.

In court, Colvin opposed the segregation law by declaring herself not guilty. The court, however, ruled against her, and put her on probation. Despite the light sentence, Colvin could not escape the court of public opinion. The once-quiet student was branded a troublemaker by some, and she had to drop out of college. Her reputation also made it impossible for her to find a job.

Despite her personal challenges, Colvin became one of the four plaintiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case. The decision in the 1956 case ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional.

Two years later Colvin moved to New York City, where she had her second son, Randy, and worked as a nurse's aide at a Manhattan nursing home. She retired in 2004.

Much of the writing on civil rights history in Montgomery has focused