On March 2, 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old Black teenager, did the same thing.
Parks is remembered for having sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which Colvin helped end more than a year later when she, along with co-plaintiffs Mary Louise Smith, Aurelia Browder and Susie McDonald, served as witnesses in Browder v. Gayle, a case that ended segregation in public transportation not just in Alabama, but eventually all across the United States after the Supreme Court affirmed the ruling.
Parks became an icon of resistance. Meanwhile, Colvin became an outcast, branded a troublemaker within her community after her initial arrest and conviction. She was abandoned by civil rights leaders when she became pregnant at 16. Although she has gained recognition in recent years — a book about her life won the National Book Award in 2009 — Colvin is still largely glossed over by history and her immense contribution and sacrifice has never been officially recognized by the U.S. government, as Parks was.
Teen Vogue reached Colvin by phone at her home in New York to talk about her experience. The following is a condensed and edited version of those conversations.
Teen Vogue: Tell us about the day of your protest.
Claudette Colvin: 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.
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.
Some white students [on the bus] were yelling: “You have to get up, you have to get up.” And a colored girl, one of the students said, “Well she don’t have to do nothing but stay Black and die.”
We were still on our best behavior taking all of the insults from the white passengers. The bus driver knew that I wasn’t breaking the law, because these seats were already for colored people. Under Jim Crow law, the bus driver could ask you to give up your seat at any time but the problem was that [the number of seats for Black and white people had to be even]. He drove the bus about four stops, and when we stopped, traffic patrol got on the bus and asked me to get up. I told him I paid my fare and said, “It’s my constitutional right!” The patrol officer yelled to the bus driver that he didn’t have any jurisdiction here.
TV: What happened after that?
CC: We thought it was all over with, because the white woman remained standing and I remained seated. I knew she wasn’t going to sit opposite me. He drove one block and that’s when the policemen from the squad car came in and asked me the same thing, and I was even more defiant.
I don’t know how I got off that bus. All the students said they manhandled me off the bus and into the squad car. They handcuffed me, booked me, and then instead of taking me to a juvenile detention center, they took me to city jail. That’s when terror came down. I became very frightened. They didn’t allow me to have a phone call, and I didn’t know that the students were gonna go and tell my parents.
My mother and my pastor come down and bail me out. I had three charges: disorderly conduct, violating segregation law, and assault and battery. They dropped two charges and just kept the one, assault and battery. They said I scratched the policeman because I didn’t get up and walk, but I don’t recall scratching him.
TV: So you were convicted of assault and battery of a police officer, a felony? Is that still on your record?
CC: Yes. I was put on indefinite probation.
TV: How has that impacted your life?
CC: That arrest changed my whole life. I was ostracized by people in my community and professional people also. I wanted to be an attorney. My mother would say I never stopped talking. I always had a lot of questions to ask, and I was never satisfied with the answer. A lot of things I wasn’t satisfied by.
TV: What was your relationship like with Rosa Parks?
CC: I first met her maybe two weeks after I got arrested. Mrs. Parks got in touch with my parents. She had a youth group and said that the youth group would like to hear my story. That summer I became secretary of the youth group, and in the fall I took over when the person in charge left for college. We would meet every Sunday afternoon. Rosa would discuss discrimination in Montgomery.
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, who was 18, was arrested too. I was a little disappointed [at being left out], because the whole movement was about young people, saying we want more from America. We want to stand up and be first class citizens. The discrimination that’s going on, whether gender or racial or whatever, religious. We want it to be brought out and defeated.
TV: Can you tell me more about the period after your arrest and conviction? How did people in the community react?
CC: 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 was wearing my hair naturally and they started saying I was crazy for doing that. They didn’t know I would go to the extreme and disobey the bus driver.
TV: This was in the 1950s. That’s so ahead of its time, especially considering natural hair is still sometimes labeled unprofessional today.
CC: Everybody was really really upset if their hair wasn’t straight. A lot of African American women wanted to emulate white women. But I said in my mind, rationally thinking, there is no way you are going to get your hair that straight, especially in the summer. By the time I straightened it I wanted to go out and play and run it would go back anyway.
I lost a lot of friends because of that. Because their mother and fathers, the only work they had was working for white people, and they didn’t want to lose their jobs. That’s the main thing.
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.
TV: Tell me about your role in Browder v. Gayle. You were the star witness. What was going through your mind when you were on the witness stand? Were you nervous? Did you rehearse what you would say beforehand?
CC: I was afraid, but as I got on the stand and started to look around, I realized that I might as well get involved. I gained strength from the audience when I was testifying. [Attorney Fred Grey, the young civil rights lawyer representing Claudette] didn’t go over the questions beforehand. I didn’t rehearse. I just wanted to expose to white people what I was going through, and how African Americans were treated. We were second class citizens. And there was no cause for it. Just because they think that they are superior.
[Afterwards], people were congratulating me and I wondered what they were congratulating me about. I hoped that I did some good.
Editor's note: This story was originally published on October 19, 2017.
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