Cross-posted at clairemysko.com.
On December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. But nine months before, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested for doing the same thing on a bus in the same city. She had been learning about black history at school that month. Reflecting on the day she was handcuffed and put in jail, she remembers it was as though Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman were on either side of her, holding her in her seat on that bus.
Colvin is now 69 years old and living in the Bronx. Her story is documented in a new book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Philip Hoose. Why have most people never heard of her? In an NPR interview, Colvin says it is because she was a teen at the time, and leaders of the civil rights movement believed Rosa Parks would make a better icon: “She was an adult. They didn’t think teenagers would be reliable.”
Though we mostly see pictures of adults representing the civil rights movement, the reality is that there were many teens whose activism made a huge difference. Hoose says he wrote his book so that more young people could be inspired by Colvin’s action.
Listen: “Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin”
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Thank you so much for posting this.
There were a lot of activists, young and old, who refused to give up their seats before Rosa Parks. The ACLU was just waiting for the perfect person to do their litigation around. There were a few other people who they could have chosen to build their litigation around, but avoided because they had minor criminal backgrounds. And there were many others arrested who ACLU couldn't build their case around b/c the charges were eventually dropped.
Pauli Murray (my favorite 1960s/1970s activist) has an awesome story in her autobiography about when she refused to give up her seat, was arrested, and how the police and other inmates reacted to her confidence and indignation.
With respect, this simply isn't true.
Claudette Colvin was not discriminated against for being young. The ACLU chose her and began legal proceedings with her but then dropped them because she became pregnant to an older married man. Unfair, yes but the ACLU rejected many activists because they wanted a 'whiter than white' defendant to go to trial with. They did not want white supremacists to be able to attack the movement by undermining the victim. That is hardly their fault.
In fact both Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin were heavily involved in the civil rights movement and were part of the NAACP activism groups at the time of their arrests. Claudette was part of NACCP Youth council. And young people were key players in the civil rights movement - have you heard of Little Rock? Or the Birmingham demonstrations? It was the images of children being attacked by dogs and being willing to be arrested by their thousands that shocked the nation and won MLK his integrationist victory in Birmingham, Alabama.