Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was an active member of the local NAACP Youth Council lead by Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama. On March 2, 1955, Colvin tested the cities’ segregated busing ordinance by refusing to give up her seat to a white rider. She was arrested, fined and jailed. The NAACP and other activists were initially excited at the prospect of organizing a bus boycott and civil rights action around Colvin’s case. Interest soon diminished when it was discovered that Colvin was several months pregnant, and her frequent outbursts and cursing made her less sympathetic to the conservative African-American churches and community.
Nine months later, activist Rosa Parks, “a pillar of the community,” became the suitable person the NAACP chose to challenge Montgomery’s busing ordinance. Parks participated in strategy sessions and discussions in preparation for the challenge against segregation. Lead by Parks, the bus boycott would last more than a year. Claudette Colvin filed a case in the U.S. District Court on February 1, 1956, Browder v. Gayle, along with three others to sue for the end of busing segregation. The decision reached on December 17, 1956 ruled that Brown v Board of Education applied to Browder v. Gayle. The boycott ended on December 20, 1956.
Parks was not a woman that just showed up on the bus one day while she was doing her daily work, she was a part of a well thought out plan to end segregation on the buses in Montgomery. Colvin was interviewed much later in life and said, “My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. Let Rosa be the one. White people are not going to bother Rosa – her skin is lighter than yours and they like her.”
Claudette Colvin should not be footnote in history. Her contributions are invaluable in the history of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.