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SN16 - Claudette Colvin
42 Plays2 months ago
Jeff and Sam share the story of Claudette Colvin, a civil rights activist who refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 2, 1955. Her act of defiance occurred nine months before Rosa Parks's similar act, making Claudette a pivotal yet often overlooked figure in the Civil Rights Movement.
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Introduction and New Segment
00:00:22
Jeff Rogers
Hello. Hi. How you doing? I'm well, I'm well, I'm sleepy. She was just curled up on the floor, under the table, in between recordings. Listen, it was lovely. I'm like laying in front of that little heat putter outer thingy and the blanket on top. Oh, even my jeans couldn't make me mad. So we have a sticky note for you today. And the sticky note is basically like the moment we hit record there's gonna be dogs barking there's gonna be trucks backing up there's gonna be ambulances it just is what it is i'm just gonna talk louder talk louder into the microphone so a sticky note we you know you sit down at your computer and you are like going down the rabbit hole on something and ashley one night was going down the rabbit hole and she was using sticky notes all over her computer
00:01:17
Jeff Rogers
And I thought we could do little sticky notes episodes. So that's what this is.
Black History Month Special: Claudette Colvin
00:01:21
Jeff Rogers
And it's also Black History Month. It is. So I'm going to bring you ah the story of somebody that you may not have heard of. And then you're going to wonder why.
00:01:36
Jeff Rogers
haven't you heard of this person? And I don't know if this is written in the script, but if I were to say to you, do you know that there was a Rosa Parks before there was a Rosa Parks? Most people would be like. No, I hadn't. Right. OK, let's do it. All right. So sometimes there are historical events that we all remember, right? A famous death, a tragedy, someone doing something that changes history.
00:02:04
Jeff Rogers
So Rosa Parks, for example, in American treasure, she refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama during the time of segregation. But what if we told you that there was a person who refused to give up her seat before Rosa Parks was even a thing? You probably don't know her name, but it's true. And it happened. The person that changed the course of history is Claudette Colvin.
Claudette Colvin's Early Life and Arrest
00:02:28
Jeff Rogers
Her story begins as a young girl growing up in segregated Montgomery, Alabama.
00:02:33
Jeff Rogers
She knew firsthand of the humiliation and violence that black people suffered if they didn't tow the line of Jim Crow. Her friend was put to death for an innocent flirtatious gesture toward a white girl. Colvin, a studious child, was determined to get the best education possible, become a lawyer, and fight for civil rights. But at the age of 15, the fight came to her.
00:02:59
Jeff Rogers
Claudette Colvin was born Claudette Austin in Montgomery, Alabama on September the 5th, 1939, to marry Jane Gatson and C.P. Austin. When Austin abandoned the family, ga Gatson was an unable to financially support her children. So Claudette and her younger sister a Delphine were taken in by their great aunt and uncle.
00:03:21
Jeff Rogers
When they took Claudette in, the Colvins lived in Pine Level, a small town near Montgomery County, the same town where rot Rosa Parks grew up. When Claudette was eight years old, the Colvins moved to King Hill, a poor black neighborhood in Montgomery, Alabama, where she spent the rest of her childhood. Two days before Claudette's 13th birthday, Delphine died of polio.
00:03:47
Jeff Rogers
Not long after that, in September of 1952, Claudette started attending Booker T. Washington High School. Despite being a good student, Claudette had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. She was also a member of the NAACP Youth Council, where she formed close relationships with her mentor Rosa Parks. On March 2nd, 1955, however,
00:04:13
Jeff Rogers
Claudette's life changed forever. The 15-year-old boarded a segregated city bus on her way home from school. Her mind filled with what she'd been learning during Negro History Week. At one stop, several white passengers got on, and the bus driver ordered her and three others to move. Though there were other seats available for the white passengers, three got up. Colvin stayed. You see, Claudette had been really paying attention in her high school social studies class, and as she recalled,
00:04:43
Jeff Rogers
quote, I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one so one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other, s saying, sit down, girl. I was glued to my seat. She later learn said, learning about those two women gave me the courage to remain seated that day. As two white police officers dragged her from the bus, her body went limp. She shouted repeatedly, it's my constitutional right. She was handcuffed.
00:05:13
Jeff Rogers
placed in jail and charged with violating segregation laws, disturbing the peace and assaulting a police officer. She pleaded not guilty, but was convicted. Two of the charges were dropped on appeal, but we'll put a pin in that. The African American community was outraged.
Impact on Civil Rights Movement
00:05:33
Jeff Rogers
Although Colvin's arrest made a stir in the local media back in 1955, the local civil rights campaign, led by a then little-known Montgomery pastor by the name of Martin Luther King Jr., ostracized her. This she attributed to a combination of factors, her age, her gender, her darker skin tone, and the fact that a few months later, she would become pregnant out of wedlock.
00:05:57
Jeff Rogers
But in the immediate aftermath of her arrest, Claudette was approached by one Miss Rosa Parks, who at the time was the secretary for the in Montgomery NAACP, and she was also a seamstress. For a brief time, the two became very close. Claudette would occasionally stay at part at Rosa's home and would serve as a mannequin for wedding dresses Rosa Park had to sew.
00:06:21
Jeff Rogers
And black organizations believe that Rosa Parks would be a better figure for a test case for integration because she was an adult, she had a job, she had a middle-class appearance, and they felt she had the maturity to handle being at the center of a potentially contri- like a potential controversy. They thought she was the one to handle it.
00:06:43
Jeff Rogers
And on December 1, 1955, a then 42-year-old Rosa Parks also refused to vacate her seat on a Montgomery bus for a white passenger. She was arrested. Days later, segregated buses became a central site of struggle. The Montgomery bus boycott during which black residents refused to use the city bus system began on December 5th, 1955. On its first day, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, my friends, I want it to be known that we're going to work with grim and bold determination determination to gain justice on the buses in this city.
00:07:22
Jeff Rogers
We are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. Two months into the boycott, her attorney, Fred Gray, remember that name, approached Claudette Colvin about a civil lawsuit that would become a landmark case known as the Browder versus Gell case.
00:07:44
Jeff Rogers
The ruling, which was taken all the way up to the Supreme Court, found that bus segregation was unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. Colvin was one of four plaintiffs and testified in court a few months after giving birth to her son, Raymond. Like other episodes in that period, she recalls it with clarity. The smell of the coffee, the prayer she said with her family before leaving for court, she faced hostile cross-examination by the city's white attorney, Walter Knabe,
00:08:14
Jeff Rogers
but emerged as the star witness among four lead plaintiffs. The city's legal strategy had essentially been to frame the bus boycott as an orchestrated act of subversion directed by outside influences, namely Martin Luther King, and to argue that Montgomery's black residents had been largely satisfied by public transit before his intervention. During the proceedings, Claudette Colvin was just 16 when she took the stand.
00:08:42
Jeff Rogers
But when the verdict came down in June, 1956, none of the civil rights attorneys she had worked with told her. Instead, she found out on the news.
Legacy and Recognition of Claudette Colvin
00:08:51
Jeff Rogers
And what was the verdict? How did it change the good old US of A? Fred Gray filed the case on February 1st, 1956 with support from the MIA and the NAACP. The defendant, William A. Gale, was the mayor of Montgomery at the time.
00:09:09
Jeff Rogers
Because Browder versus Gale challenged the constitutionality of a state statute, it was heard by a three-judge panel, including Frank Johnson, who would later overturn Governor George Wallace's 1965 attempts to block the march from Selma. All four women testified to their mistreatment on city buses while the city argued that it had been enforcing the laws as written. In a two-to-one decision issued on June 5th, The panel ruled that, quote, the enforced segregation of black and white passengers on motor buses violates the Constitution and laws of the United States, specifically the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The city immediately appealed the ruling, sending it to the Supreme Court for review.
00:09:55
Jeff Rogers
And the boycott continued through the remaining months of 1956, capturing the attention and igniting passions across the country. Black citizens were finally participating in mass direct action movement to resist Jim Crow. But while white passengers resistance was still formidable and segregated buses were still the law, on the 12th of that month, ah but a boycott leader waited anxiously for the ruling on the injunction.
00:10:23
Jeff Rogers
Martin Luther King Jr. used a sermon to rally his followers, asking them to, quote, believe that a way will meet be made out of no way. He says in his memoir that he felt the cold breeze of pessimism pass through the audience that day. But on November 13th, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision in Browder versus Gell, legally ending racial segregation on public transportation in the state of Alabama.
00:10:51
Jeff Rogers
This was one year, nine months, and 18 days after Claudette's arrest. And obviously, this didn't change things for Claudette overnight. She continued to struggle for opportunities in Montgomery. She was still ostracized by local leaders in the Black community while enduring the racism of the South. She abandoned her dreams of becoming a civil rights attorney and in her early 20s moved to New York, but becoming a nursing assistant.
00:11:20
Jeff Rogers
For decades, her story went untold. She wouldn't discuss it with the community she worked in, fearing they would simply they simply wouldn't understand. It was not until she retired that she began opening up to the public. Today, Claudette remains optimistic about the sacrifices she made as a teenager and says, it's like my mother said, everything is designed. Your destiny is already mapped out, planned by God.
00:11:44
Jeff Rogers
She points to the successes of her five grandchildren spread throughout the country and says, I'm living the fruits of my labor through them. But our dear listeners, if you thought that was the end of the story, I have a little bit more for you and for Sam. Remember when Claudette was yanked from the bus and they filed three charges against her while she still had that one remaining assault charge against her. And she didn't assault anybody. She went limp when the cops dragged her off the bus.
00:12:14
Jeff Rogers
And she even said that the person that she didn't stand up for was a young white woman. Like had it been an older woman, she would have stood up and gave her the seat. Had it been a pregnant woman, she would have stood up and gave her the seat. But she was dragged from the bus. She went limp. She didn't assault anybody. So she wanted that charge removed.
00:12:32
Jeff Rogers
So in 2021, when Claudette was in her 80s, she wanted that charge to be removed. She wanted that change. Claudette shows up to a juvenile court in Montgomery, Alabama, where she was joined by none other than Mr. Fred Gray, the OG attorney who helped bring the Browder versus Gail case to victory.
00:12:53
Jeff Rogers
He's in his 90s at the time. She and Mr. Gray make an appeal to have the charge dropped. And in December of 2021, the judge, a man named Calvin Williams, signs an order to clear Claudette's name. He mentions her protest on the bus saying, quote, The protest has since been recognized as a courageous act on her behalf and on behalf of a community of black people, end quote.
00:13:18
Jeff Rogers
In 2005, Claudette told the Chicago Tribune, quote, let the people know that Rosa Parks was the right person for the boy boycott, but also let them know that the attorneys took four of the women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation. And that is the powerful story of Claudette Colvin, who helped change the laws in America for the better. Magnificent. Such a badass woman. Like she.
00:13:48
Jeff Rogers
met history right at the right time. Oh, I love that. You know what I mean? So cool. But you're right. I think you don't hear about her. No. And she. Honestly, like she said, the person that she didn't stand up for, this is such a big point. This shows you how decent of a human being Claudette was, right? She said, had it been a pregnant woman, up she would have stood, and had it been an elderly person, of course she would have stood up. But this was like a 20-something year old white lady. Yeah. Who just for the sake of- She just thought she deserved it because she was white. Yep.
00:14:21
Jeff Rogers
And there you go. Yeah, that was good, wasn't it? It was great. um ah Listen to our show coming out Thursday. Another sticky note next week. I think that's it, right? Do we have anything else? No. We'll see you. Perfect. Have a good day, guys.