March 2 1955: CLAUDETTE COLVIN IN HER OWN WORDS

Before Rosa Parks there was Claudette Colvin

     Colvin was the first person to be arrested for challenging Montgomery's bus segregation policies, so her story made a few local papers - but nine months later, the same act of defiance by Rosa Parks was reported all over the world

 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-43171799

Claudette Colvin said, 

     February was, at that time, only Negro History Week, not history month. But the faculty members at my school said we were are gonna do it the whole month because African Americans — at that time we were called "negroes" — were deliberately kept out of American history. The boys liked to talk about Jackie Robinson, breaking the baseball barrier. My instructor talked about Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. We started talking about the injustice and how we were discriminated against locally. That’s why I was so fired up and so angry when the bus driver asked me to get up. It was more than myself....

     I  was in 11th grade.
     It started out a normal day.We got out early and 13 of us students walked to downtown Montgomery and boarded a city bus on Dexter Avenue, exactly across the street from Dr. Martin Luther King’s church.
     As the bus proceeded down Court Square, more white passengers got on the bus. In order for this white lady to have a seat, four students would have to vacate because a white person wasn’t allowed to sit across from a colored person. So the bus driver asked for the four seats and three of the students got up. I remained seated.
     History had me glued to the seat. Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth’s hand were pushing down on the other shoulder. I was paralyzed between these two women, I couldn’t move...

TV: You were dropped by the movement after the trial as a young single mother. Do you ever feel like you don’t get enough credit? For instance, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History refers to your contribution in passing as a “test case,” when in fact you played a pivotal role in the case that helped crumble segregation.

CC:I was glad that Rosa did it and that people was at last going to stand out. It was important to have Rosa as a face that they could rally around. All four of us didn't get enough credit. Mary Louise Smith...

Some people, the students, were sympathetic at first. They knew my mindset and what I was thinking, but their parents persuaded them not to be involved with me because I was a troublemaker and “this wasn’t the right thing to do.” They already thought I was crazy. Before then, in the 10th grade, I had stopped straightening my hair...

I didn't know about depression, but I became a little depressed. I lost all my friends and really needed someone. I got pregnant in July and I went back to school in September. I began showing around four months after I was pregnant. I was expelled from school around the Christmas holiday . My principal told me not to come back...

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/claudette-colvin-explains-her-role-in-the-civil-rights-movement 

      She went to Montgomery juvenile court on March 18, 1955, and was represented by Fred Gray, an African American lawyer from the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Although she defended her innocence on the three charges, she was found guilty. The court sentenced her to indefinite probation and declared her to be a ward of the state.      The Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) looked into her case and initially raised money to appeal her conviction. On May 6, 1955, her case was moved to the Montgomery Circuit Court, where two of the three charges against Colvin were dropped. Colvin’s charge of allegedly assaulting the arresting police officers was maintained...

     [While Jo Ann Robinson and the Women’s Political Council (WPC) led the Montgomery bus boycott in December of 1955,] the NAACP and MIA filed a lawsuit on behalf of Colvin, and four other women, including Mary Louise Smith, who had been involved in earlier acts of civil disobedience on the Montgomery buses. 

     Colvin served as a witness for the case, Gayle v Browder, which eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Gayle v Browder more explicitly overturned Plessy v Ferguson than Brown v Board had, because like Plessy, it was specifically about transportation...

https://blackpast.org/aah/colvin-claudette-1935 

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PLESSY V FERGUSON (establishes "separate but equal" in 1896)

     This case turns upon the constitutionality of an act of the general assembly of the state of Louisiana, passed in 1890, providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races.
     The first section of the statute enacts 'that all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state, shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations: provided, that this section shall not be construed to apply to street railroads.
     No person or persons shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches, other than the ones assigned to them, on account of the race they belong to.'

https://blackpast.org/primarywest/plessy-v-ferguson-1896