The First “Rosa Parks,” Claudette Colvin, Moves Beyond Respectability Politics
by Maya Doig-Acuña
Claudette Colvin speaks with a surprisingly gentle Southern lilt. Turning in her armchair to face 1010 WINS’ Larry Mullins at a recent event, she said, “Well, I begin my story like all stories…” Pausing for dramatic effect, she finished, “Once Upon a Time,” and then laughed. Her laughter, like her voice, has a particular gentleness. It bubbles and spills over, before trailing off quietly like a stream meeting soil.
All of this softness is surprising given her historical characterization as loud and defiant. Indeed, those that have heard of Colvin usually know her as the 15-year old from Montgomery, Alabama, who refused to give up her bus seat for a white woman, and was dragged off the bus kicking and screaming. Before some know her name, they know her as the Black girl who resisted segregation with curse words, and who history ignored because of it.
Now 77, Colvin has begun to push back against this narrative, appearing on public forums like 1010 WINS to clarify her role in America’s civil rights movement.
In March of 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks’ famous act of civil disobedience, teenage Colvin asserted her own right to remain seated. “I could not move because history had me glued to the seat,” explained Colvin. “It felt like Sojourner Truth had pushed me down on one shoulder, and Harriet Tubman on the other.”
Colvin was taken to jail for her resistance and later testified in the landmark case Browder v. Gale — which desegregated public transportation. Still, her story has remained largely unknown, at least compared to Parks’.
This relative anonymity is not a coincidence: Parks was light-skinned, an adult, a seasoned Civil Rights activist, and apparently, more “well-mannered.” Colvin, dark-skinned and young, had spontaneously decided to protest. Moreover, a few months after her arrest, she became pregnant. In short, she did not fit “the image of…someone they [civil rights leaders] would want to show off.” Thus, Civil Rights Era respectability politics silenced Colvin and her story, effectively removing her from historical record until 2008, when author Philip Hoose wrote a YA book about her, Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice.
Civil Rights leaders from the 50’s and 60’s explained their decision to highlight Parks as politically expedient; E.D. Nixon, president of the Montgomery NAACP and organizer of the Bus Boycotts said, “I had to be sure that I had somebody I could win with.”
Left unsaid is the fact that “winning” during the Civil Rights Movement in part meant capturing the sympathies of white folks, which in part boiled down to reinforcing colorism. At 1010 WINS, Colvin spoke honestly, and seemingly without resentment, about the pervasive colorism during this period: “Oh that was always going on down south!” she said, chuckling again.
Indeed, everyone around Colvin expected her to simply accept their political strategy, even as it erased her act of bravery. Colvin’s own mother told her, “the leaders have chosen [Parks], so we will never speak of this again.” For a long time, Colvin did not. But what do we lose when we silence our own?
Colvin’s story is particularly resonant in light of our current movement for racial justice. Indeed, Black Lives Matter, unlike the Civil Rights Movement, explicitly rejects respectability politics, and embraces a more inclusive liberation. Colvin reminds us of why this inclusion is important: with a thread of steel in her soft voice, Colvin sat forward in her armchair and said, “I just wanted the other people on the bus to know that this colored girl was tired of Jim Crow.”
We are stronger, and more free, today, because of such clear defiance. Colvin appears to have made her peace with the past, as in she harbors no bitterness toward Parks or other activists. Still, she shows us through her willingness to share her story now, that peace is not passive or silent, but instead, as Martin Luther King Jr. once explained, active, present, and loud.
It is truth followed by bubbling laughter.
To hear Part 1 of the conversation between Claudette Colvin and Larry Mullins, click here.
