Claudette Colvin
Presentation
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English
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7th - 8th Grade
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Practice Problem
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Easy
+19
Standards-aligned
Nicole Reale
Used 16+ times
FREE Resource
19 Slides • 11 Questions
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Claudette Colvin
Teen Activist
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Background Information
Rosa Parks is well-known for her refusal to give up her seat to a white person on a bus in Alabama. A famous bus boycott followed because of her courageous act of protest. What many people do not know is that Rosa Parks was not the first person to refuse to give up her seat. Read on to find out about Claudette Colvin, a young lady whose actions sparked the Civil Rights Movement.
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Nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, a 15-year old girl named Claudette Colvin did the same thing. Her story is virtually unknown, even though her bravery inspired activists like Rosa Parks. Before the bus boycott made famous by Rosa Parks, a number of women had also been arrested and quietly fined for refusing to give up their seats.
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Claudette Colvin was the first to really challenge the law.
Now a 69-year old retiree, Colvin lives in the Bronx, New York. She remembers taking the bus home from high school on March 12, 1955, as clear as if it were yesterday.
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The bus driver ordered Claudette to get up so that a white person could have her seat. She refused, saying that she'd paid her fare and that she had rights according to the U.S. Constitution. Two police officers put her in handcuffs and arrested her. Claudette remembers her school books flying off her lap as the officers pulled her to her feet.
"I was not going to walk off that bus voluntarily," Colvin remembers.
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Open Ended
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Claudette recalls it being "Negro History Month" at her segregated high school and that her class had been studying black leaders like Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman was a runaway slave who led more than 70 slaves to freedom through the network of safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She also learned about Sojourner Truth, a former slave who became an abolitionist and women's rights activist.
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These stories inspired Claudette and her classmates. They talked about the injustices they were experiencing daily as young Black teens in the South. Under the Jim Crow segregation laws, they faced inequities in school, at restaurants, and in most public places.
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Multiple Choice
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"We couldn't try on clothes," Claudette says. "You had to take a brown paper bag and trace the outline of your foot...and take it to the store. Can you imagine all of that in my mind? My head was just too full of black history, you know, the oppression that we went through. It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side pushing me down. I couldn't get up."
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Claudette also remembers the sound of the jail cell closing. She says it felt like she was in a Western movie.
"And then I got scared, and panic came over me," she remembers. "I started crying and I started saying the Lord's prayer."
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Author Phil Hoose was amazed when he heard Claudette's story. Despite a few articles about her in the Birmingham press and in USA Today, and a few mentions in some books about the Civil Rights Movement, most people don't know about Colvin's role in the Montgomery Bus Boycotts.
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Hoose couldn't get over the teenager's actions, nine months before Rosa Parks, "in the same city, in the same bus system." She received the same harsh consequences--being hauled off the bus, handcuffed, jailed...and nobody knew about it.
He was determined to change that.
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In his book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, Phil Hoose introduces her story to the world.
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Open Ended
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There are many reasons why Claudette Colvin has been pretty much forgotten. She hardly ever told her story when she moved to New York City. In her new community, hardly anyone was talking about integration; instead, people were talking about black enterprises, black power, and Malcom X.
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People have asked Claudette why Rosa Parks is the "face" of the boycott. Colvin's reply? "The NAACP and all the other black organizations felt Parks would be a good icon because she was an adult. They didn't think teenagers would be reliable or taken seriously," she said.
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She also said that Rosa Parks "had the right hair and the right look."
"Her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class," says Colvin. "She fit that profile."
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David Garrow, a historian, says that most people think that Parks' action was spontaneous, but in fact, it was planned by black civic leaders. They had been thinking about how to take action against bus segregation in Montgomery for years.
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David Garrow also reported that after Claudette Colvin's arrest, she was shunned by parts of the community. She got into some trouble and found herself pregnant. Civil rights leaders felt that she was an inappropriate symbol of protest.
On the other hand, Rosa Parks was the secretary of the NAACP and was well-known and respected in Montgomery. Garrow said Parks was "impressive."
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Multiple Choice
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Now, years later, Claudette's story has been brought to light. Garrow is supportive of this attention. He says, "The real reality of the movement was often young people and often more than 50% women." The images you most often see are men in suits. While it's easy to understand why Rosa Parks was chosen to be the symbol of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, it's also necessary to acknowledge Claudette's contribution.
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Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks will always be heroes. Their courageous acts continue to inspire people to stand up against injustices.
Claudette's story is also important. She was 15. She did something that not many teens would be willing to do--to stand up to the injustice of segregation. She has spent her life in the shadow of Rosa Parks, but is finally becoming a hero in the eyes of those who know her story.
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Claudette Colvin
Teen Activist
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