“I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right’.” – Claudette Colvin.
Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939, in Montgomery, Alabama. Months before Rosa Parks, Colvin stood against segregation in Alabama in 1955, when she was only 15-years-old. She also served as a plaintiff in the landmark legal case Browder V. Gayle, which helped end the practice of segregation on Montgomery public buses.
Growing up in one of Montgomery’s poorer neighborhoods, Colvin studied hard at school. She earned mostly A’s in her classes and even aspired to become president one day. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was riding home on a city bus when she was told to give up her seat to a white passenger. She refused, saying, “It’s my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it’s my constitutional right.” Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. “I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other – saying “sit down girl!” I was glued to my seat,” she later told Newsweek.
Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city’s segregation laws. For several hours, she sat in jail, completely terrified. After her minister paid her bail, she went home where she and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation. The NAACP briefly considered using Colvin’s case to challenge the segregation laws, but they decided against it because of her age.
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