Colvin, Claudette (1939-…), was the first person known to have resisted bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama. On public buses in Montgomery, African Americans were banned from sitting in seats reserved for whites only, or in the same row with white passengers. In 1955, when Colvin was 15 years old, she was arrested for refusing to leave a row of seats for a white passenger. Later that year, Rosa Parks, another African American bus passenger, triggered a boycott of the Montgomery bus system when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. Parks is credited with helping to bring about the civil rights movement in the United States. Few people knew of Colvin’s earlier protest.
Colvin was born on Sept. 5, 1939, in Birmingham, Alabama. She grew up in Montgomery. On March 2, 1955, Colvin boarded a public bus to return home from high school. She was sitting in the middle section of the bus when a white woman passenger boarded. The driver ordered Colvin, along with three other black passengers in the same row, to move to the back of the bus so that the white passenger could sit in that row. Two police officers removed Colvin from the bus and took her to jail. She was charged with disorderly conduct, violating the segregation ordinance, and assault and battery. In juvenile court, Colvin was convicted of all charges. After her lawyer appealed, only her conviction on the assault charge was retained.
Around this time, Colvin became active in the Youth Council of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights organization. E. D. Nixon, a leader of the chapter, had been waiting for a case to challenge bus segregation. The NAACP assisted Colvin in her case. But black leaders were concerned about using a teenager convicted of assaulting a police officer to represent their movement. As a result, Colvin’s case got little publicity. After Parks, a 42-year-old seamstress, was arrested on December 1, black Montgomerians formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), a civil rights organization. The MIA successfully organized a boycott of the segregated city buses.
In 1956, Colvin and three other women filed a legal action challenging Montgomery’s segregated public transportation system. In June, the federal court case, known as Browder v. Gayle, overturned bus segregation laws in Montgomery and Alabama. In November, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld that ruling.
Colvin moved to New York City in 1958. She worked as a nurse’s assistant in a nursing home for 35 years before retiring in 2004.
See also Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ; Montgomery bus boycott ; Parks, Rosa Louise .
