As far as I’m concerned, Parks deserves the honor and recognition that was heaped upon her. But history has been unkind to another woman who has been denied her rightful place in history. That woman’s name is Claudette Colvin.
Most of us who revere civil rights history have a picture in our minds in which a light-skinned woman, wearing eyeglasses, looks out a Montgomery bus while she refuses to give up her seat to a white person. Of course, Rosa Parks was arrested. A bus boycott began. Dr. Martin L. King was installed as a leader. And a civil rights movement began and continues to this day.
History — or those who wrote it — skipped over Colvin. You see, Colvin was one of a few women who were arrested before Parks in 1955. “On March 2, 1955, she, just as Parks had, openly refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery segregated bus to a white passenger,” wrote Phillip Hoose, author of “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.” “Her arrest preceded the arrest of Parks by nine months.”
Colvin was feisty for a 15-year-old. Just before she was arrested, Colvin said that she was thinking of the slavery fighters she had read about. “The spirit of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth was in me,” Colvin said. “I didn’t get up.”
Colvin was kicked and dragged off the bus. She was handcuffed and taken to the city jail. She was charged with disorderly conduct, assault and battery, and violating the segregation ordinance. Colvin stayed in a single-cell jail until her minister and mother came to get her out.
Colvin and Parks were not strangers to one another. Colvin was in the Youth Council of the NAACP and was advised by Parks. Parks and other black leaders raised money for Colvin’s defense.
According to Hoose, the choice of Parks over Colvin is multifaceted and steeped in negritude. The leader of the NAACP there, E.D. Nixon, had been waiting on a test case to break down the walls of bus segregation.
Black leaders began to dicker about who should represent them in a possible nationwide segregation test case. Colvin’s father mowed lawns. Her mother was a maid. The Colvins were churchgoing people but they lived in King’s Hill, the poorest section of Montgomery. The police department had accused Claudette of spewing obscenities at them. Colvin didn’t help her case that summer by becoming pregnant.
It was also felt by some black leaders that Colvin wouldn’t be a good court representative because she was too young and too dark-skinned to win the fight against segregation for her people. But later on, Colvin testified in a Montgomery federal court hearing in the Browder v. Gayle case, which declared segregated busing in Montgomery unconstitutional.
Colvin and Parks had some mutual admiration for one another, even though Parks was the chosen one. “Colvin admires Rosa Parks and concedes that a self-assured adult of 42 made a better symbol for the bus boycott than an impetuous youth of 15 would have,” Hoose said. Parks was a family friend and Colvin used to spend the night at her house.
Hopefully, if you have read this column, you are at least aware of Colvin, the black teenager who preceded Parks in the same heroism. Colvin has been mired in anonymity for a few reasons. When she moved to New York City, she didn’t get to speak about her experiences in Montgomery. She felt that the NAACP back home backed a very cultured adult in the person of Parks, who was, after all, secretary of the NAACP. Colvin felt that she would always be in Parks’ shadow.
Colvin deserves all honors, accolades and recognition. Put her statue high in the civil rights hall of fame. After all, Colvin was the “first Rosa Parks.”
Elmon W. Prier is a veteran educator and minister. His e-mail address is eprier@cinci.rr.com.