It was 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama. A group of four female students, returning from Booker T. Washington High School, boarded the bus, paid their fares and then took their seats. The girls were seated near each other in opposite rows of two seats. They were seated as far up as they “were allowed to sit,” under the laws of segregation, at the time. And then the bus got crowded.
“We had not planned to protest,” said Claudette Colvin, one of four plaintiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case that led to the desegregation of the buses in the federal district court in June of 1956. It was upheld in the Supreme Court in December of the same year.
Three of the four girls got up for a white woman who had boarded the bus, but not Colvin, who was seated next to a window. She said that the woman could have sat down on the empty row of seats that was opposite her. But the woman would not sit in the same section as Colvin, she said. She had a “whole seat by herself across from me,” Colvin said, and she could have sat down. However, the “bus motor,” who asked Colvin to get up, never stopped the bus completely during this whole ordeal. He went to court square, “where the buses make the connections,” Ms. Colvin said,
A traffic patrolman got on the bus through the back door and asked if the bus driver asked her to get up. Colvin told the AmNews that she told the patrolman,”I paid my fare. It is my constitutional right” to sit.
“I was glued to the seat: [The spirit of] Harriet Tubman put her hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Sit down, girl,’” she said with a chuckle in the telephone interview.
It was the month of February, and the teacher complained that the students didn’t know the contributions African-Americans like Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Jackie Robinson made. The students in class were learning about Marian Anderson and others when this happened.
Colvin said the patrolman on the bus told the bus driver it wasn’t in his jurisdiction to arrest her. She said she was not making any noise. Then two policemen came on the bus, “saw me sitting there” and asked if the bus driver asked her to get up. She repeated that she paid her fare and it was her constitutional right to sit.
“I refused to get up,” she said. “They knocked my books out of my lap.” They physically removed her from the bus, she told the AmNews.
“I was a teenager. I had no fear. If [white people] didn’t know you, they didn’t know how to be polite,” she said, “so we were use to their behavior and attitude.”
When off the bus, the policemen “asked me to stick my hands out the window” and then they put handcuffs on me, she said. They then took her to City Hall and then to the city jail.
A lot of people credit Rosa Parks for beginning the struggle to desegregate the buses, and although Ms. Parks was the one who ignited the Montgomery bus boycott, it was the Supreme Court case of Browder vs. Gayle that ultimately desegregated the buses.
Colvin said that it was not until five years ago in a movie that this fact came out for the average person to know. “My co-workers were telling me about the movie,” she said. Colvin, born September 5, 1939, came to New York in 1968 and is a retired nursing
assistant who lives in the Bronx.
Besides law students, most don’t know about the case or her act of civil disobedience that opened the door to many of the rights that African-Americans were finally granted from the Civil Rights Movement. Mary Louise Smith, a plaintiff in the case, also refused to get up from her seat months before Parks. In that incident, a white woman asked her to get up. According to Colvin, Smith told the women it was the bus driver’s job to tell her to get up. “She used profanity; I didn’t,” Colvin said.
Colvin said she never felt resentful at Park’s fame for desegregating the buses. However, she was “disappointed” by the Browder vs. Gayle case because the four girls were never mentioned in most historical accounts. It was originally five people, two teenagers and three adults, but one dropped out. Colvin said that in 1956, while about three months pregnant, she testified in the case. Laughing, she said they could not use her for the movement because they found out she was pregnant. Other accounts also attribute her “darker” skin as a factor in the decision to use Parks as the spokesperson.
“They didn’t use Mary Louise Smith, either,” she said. “They said her father was a drunk. They needed the right people to win the white community. [And Ms. Parks], she was a respectable Black woman; they figured they couldn’t use two teenagers.” The “they” she’s referring to is the NAACP. Reflecting on President Barack Obama breaking the “last barrier” in his journey to the White House, Colvin said that after Hillary Clinton didn’t win the primary, she knew Obama would win.
“Bush did that,” she said. “People wanted something different than a Republican. How can you promote democracy if you disenfranchise its citizens for so long? This is America’s chance to redeem herself, and Obama is the fulfillment of that.” Colvin noted, “It’s not a miracle that he’s there,” she said. “He is the best they had. “He is not “contaminated” by the laws and history of America’s racial oppression toward African-Americans. He is Hawaiian, she said. “He read about the injustices of the past, but that’s a different thing than if you have lived it. I am more proud of Michelle Obama and the portrayal of a Black family that her and her children represent.”
She continued to say that she hopes the inauguration is not a “rock concert” with all the excitement, and then when you leave, it’s over. “I hope the young people keep going, keep pushing. We have a lot of work to do, “she said. “I know that Black people are not inferior.” She said that we are losing too many Black men to prison and pleaded for them not to waste their minds. “We’re not competing against white people. It’s a 360-degree turn: People are coming out of every nation,” she said. “With faith and taking it seriously, this historic moment of electing a Black president can continue to inspire people. I hope it’s not just a one-day thing.”