During Black History Month, Fair360, formerly DiversityInc is honoring a series of Black innovators and history makers such as Claudette Colvin who are often overlooked in mainstream media coverage and history books. Check back throughout February to learn about more important figures.
Born: Sept. 5, 1939 Montgomery, Ala.
Best known for: Refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus nine months before Rosa Parks’s famous act of civil disobedience.
Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in December of 1955, but months earlier, a younger woman whose name is less often featured in history books did the same. Claudette Colvin was just 15 when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, a case that ruled Montgomery’s segregated bus system was unconstitutional.
Colvin grew up in one of Montgomery’s poorer neighborhoods. She was a dedicated student, and in her segregated school that month, students had been learning about Black figures like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, she told NPR in 2009. She said she and her classmates were also talking about forms of racism and discrimination they faced under segregation in the South.
On March 2, 1955, Colvin was riding home from school on a city bus when the driver demanded she give up her seat to a white passenger. Though she later shared with NPR how scared she was, she stood her ground.
“It just so happens they picked me at the wrong time — it was Negro History Month, and I was filled up like a computer,” Colvin told Newsweek in 2009. “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.”
Police dragged Colvin away in handcuffs, arresting her on several charges, including violating Montgomery’s segregation laws. They brought the teenager to jail where she stayed until the reverend at the church her family attended paid her bail. In Phillip Hoose’s 2009 biography of Colvin, “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice,” Colvin recounts the officers harassing her and calling her names like “n—– bitch,” “thing,” and “whore.” She also describes the fear she and her community felt after the incident, saying her family and neighbors stayed up all night to keep watch against retaliation.
“I had stood up to a white bus driver and two white cops,” she said in the biography. “I had challenged the bus law. There had been lynchings and cross burnings for that kind of thing.”
Colvin’s community may have been on her side that night, but her story did not gain as much traction as it could have. A number of women had been doing the same thing Colvin and Parks did but were typically just fined and did not make headlines. The NAACP, however, considered using Colvin’s story to challenge segregation laws. They ultimately did not because of her youth and because she became pregnant shortly after her arrest. They believed an unwed teen mother would attract too much public criticism.
Nine months later, Rosa Parks became the face of the fight against Montgomery bus segreg