The original Rosa Parks: A Q&A with Claudette Colvin

Nine months before Rosa Parks resisted segregation laws by refusing to leave her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus so a white person could sit down, a 15-year-old girl took the same courageous action in Montgomery and was arrested. Claudette Colvin wasn’t chosen as the face of the movement, though, and never achieved the level of fame that Parks did. She moved to the Bronx while the South was still under Jim Crow laws, and has lived in relative quiet ever since.

Many have tried to bring more attention to the 76-year-old’s story, including New York City Councilman Andy King, who honored her last week. And this month, she is traveling to Albany as lawmakers push a resolution to declare a “Claudette Colvin Day” in New York. City & State’s Jeff Coltin talked to Colvin about life in the Jim Crow South, being passed over and the current state of the movement. The following is an edited transcript.

City & State: March 2, 1955. Why did you decide at that moment not to give up your seat?

Claudette Colvin: It was just another day. That evening we got out of school early. Why, I can’t recall. Instead of going home we walked downtown to browse around. The bus route went through a predominantly white neighborhood. We sat in the seats that were assigned to us – colored people, at that time. Colored people in the back and white in the front. So the bus driver asked for the seat. I refused. Three other students got up, and I refused.

It was an impulsive act. Because we had been studying about Negro history, all the contributions that we’d made to this country. At that time, the encyclopedia only had two African-Americans in it: Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver. So we talked about all our grievances and all the injustice, and we talked about our heroes. My mind was just fed up. I couldn’t take one more second of that Jim Crow system. History had me glued to the seat. I just couldn’t move! I wasn’t breaking the law. I just wanted the white people that was passengers on that bus to know that there was this one little Negro girl who wasn’t going to yield to that injustice.

C&S: Despite your stand, you weren’t made the face of the movement. Was that your choice, or somebody else’s choice?

CC: The face of the movement was chosen by the MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association) after they organized, and they chose Mrs. Rosa Parks. She was an adult, and she was the secretary of the local NAACP chapter. They didn’t want to use a teenager as the face of the movement. They wanted to draw in more of the adult people. Who was going to listen to a teenager, whether you had a good idea or a bad idea? Mrs. Parks, when she first heard the story, she thought that I was an overgrown teenager who liked to sass white people. Then when she talked to my instructors, my teachers, and different people, she found out that I was very intellectually mature for my age and I knew my rights.

C&S: Was there great fear of retaliation?

CC: As a teenager, no! That was the everyday system – you had to be afraid every day, because segregation was a way of life. You know, there was a long list of do’s and don’ts. And if you stepped out of your boundaries, you would be arrested, you would be prosecuted. The KKK was very active. But I wasn’t afraid.

C&S: You also testified before the Supreme Court as a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the case that ended segregation on buses. Why were you chosen as a plaintiff?

CC: I was ostracized by the group – but that’s the way it was when you had a child out of wedlock. My child was born March 29, 1956. Attorney Fred Gray had come to New York to talk to Robert Carter, and he got advice from Thurgood Marshall. They had already prepped Mrs. Parks to be the face of the movement. The MIA chose her. When the attorneys told him that it wasn’t a good idea to use Mrs. Parks because she had been arrested for a misdemeanor and the court could keep delaying that case, and they didn’t know whether the citizens and protesters would be willing to go another year, they had to choose other plaintiffs. So Fred Gray asked the ministers, but they wouldn’t volunteer because black churches had been bombed by the KKK. So they asked my mom, my parents, would they be willing to let me testify, and would I be willing to do it. My mom said, “they must be downright desperate!”

Mrs. Parks was the desirable image. She was light-skinned enough. That’s my opinion. Anyway, she knew what was happening, she knew how the system works. They didn’t understand that although my parents only had a sixth grade education, they knew how the system worked. My father was very active. They knew all about the system. Anyway they had to come to me and ask my parents.

C&S: That was all when you were living in Alabama. Why’d you move to the Bronx?

CC: Because every time I got a job to try to support my family, when my identity would be revealed, I’d be fired. Some people didn’t intentionally do it, but they would see “that was the girl on the bus!” To me, the Bronx looked like it was cheaper to rent than Manhattan, so that’s why.

C&S: You lived through Jim Crow laws in the South, but you’ve also lived through the years of urban neglect in the Bronx. Do they feel like part of the same system?

CC: Yeah it’s part of the same system! In the South, people openly acted like they did back in slavery times. They still called black men boys and they still called grown black women girls. In the North, there’s no signs, but you know it’s divided. Every little group has its own little niche. They had their own little communities.

It is different than in the South. My very first experience, when I got off the bus at Port Authority, I went into a drug store with a lunch counter to get a hamburger. I had bags in both of my hands because I was traveling. This white man held the door for me. I just stood there and looked at him (laughs). He didn’t know why I was staring at him. In the South, no white man ever would’ve opened the door for me.

C&S: Does it feel to you like we’re in the midst of another civil rights movement?

CC: I think where we left off, what was left undone – only like four laws were changed – we had some triumphs, but economically, like if you lived in New York, you don’t see any change! If you live past the Mason-Dixon line, you know the changes that were made. You saw the changes, the signs were taken down. You know, the public accommodation law, all those do’s and don’ts. You couldn’t step out of your boundaries. In New York, it was different. There was a lot of economics. You were segregated here in New York. They didn’t have the signs up. They just did it. That’s what they call de facto. Still in the modern times! I just feel sorry that African Americans, that we haven’t progressed as much as we should have. That the youth haven’t taken advantage of these barriers that we old veterans have broken down.

C&S: You just appeared with City Councilman Andy King. Are you involved with local politics?

CC: Not like I should. My health has declined. I can’t be out there and be in rallies, you know, and be a part of it. I think I paid my dues to society because I worked in a nursing home for 36 years. Mary Manning on York Avenue. I became an 1199’er, so I know that the union was important. That’s why I’m able to get my little pension and social security!

C&S: Tell me about this campaign in Albany to declare a “Claudette Colvin Day.”

CC: If you’ve given Mrs. Parks all the recognition, then you haven’t told the true story! Most of the young children, they have this takeaway, especially in New York – down in the South, they understand a little bit more – that the civil rights movement was a failure. But I tell them, it wasn’t a complete failure. Yes, we had our tragedies, but we also had our triumphs. The young group now has a different attitude than the old group, than we veterans. You don’t understand, we had never been accepted before! America as a society, as a country, had never accepted black people. We were still second-class citizens.

I think now, they want to understand. A lot of them, they say, “Oh you were the first.” I wasn’t the first person that was arrested! That was the system that went on down South. If you stepped out of your boundaries, you were arrested. But what happened was that in my time, so much injustice was going on to the younger people. Since March the 2nd – and I did that impulsively, spontaneously – there were people saying, “What about the 15-year-old girl?” And now people want to know, “Whatever happened to the little 15-year-old girl?”

And Phil Hoose got that out by writing his biography, “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.” So now, I hope it inspires the young groups, that they should use every resource available to them so they can reach their fullest potential and become very productive in this so-called – well, America isn’t flawless, but I still love America – this democratic society that we live in.