Alabama civil rights pioneer seeks expungement of 1955 arrest record
MONTGOMERY, ALA. — Months before Rosa Parks became the mother of the modern civil rights movement by refusing to move to the back of a segregated Alabama bus, Black teenager Claudette Colvin did the same. Convicted of assaulting a police officer while being arrested, she was placed on probation yet never received notice that she’d finished the term and was on safe ground legally.
Now 82 and slowed by age, Colvin has asked a judge to end the matter once and for all. She wants a court in Montgomery to wipe away a record that her lawyer says has cast a shadow over the life of a largely unsung hero of the civil rights era.
“I am an old woman now. Having my records expunged will mean something to my grandchildren and great grandchildren. And it will mean something for other Black children,” Colvin said in a sworn statement.
Supporters sang civil rights anthems and clapped as Colvin entered the clerk’s office and filed the expungement request Tuesday. Her attorney, Phillip Ensler, said he was seeking all legal documents to be sealed and all records of the case erased.
Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey later said he agreed with the request to clear Colvin’s record, removing any doubt it would be approved.
“I guess you can say that now I am no longer a juvenile delinquent,” Colvin told a crowd that included relatives, well wishers and activists.
Also present was famed civil rights attorney Fred Gray, now 90, who’s not currently involved in her case.
Recalling her arrest, Colvin told the crowd: “My mindset was on freedom.”
“So I was not going to move that day,” she said. “I told them that history had me glued to the seat.”
Colvin left Alabama at age 20 and spent decades in New York, but relatives always worried what might happen when she returned for visits since no court official ever said she had finished probation, according to Ensler.
“Her family has lived with this tremendous fear ever since then,” he said. “For all the recognition of recent years and the attempts to tell her story, there wasn’t anything done to clear her record.”