Claudette Colvin and a seat on the bus
Editor’s Note: This February, for Black History Month, the Pottstown School District is making regular posts on its Facebook page. The district is paying tribute both to the accomplishments of some of our country’s historical giants, while also highlighting stories from those whose contributions aren’t always captured in the telling of our nation’s history. What follows is a selection from those posts.
Before Rosa Parks, there was Claudette Colvin.
On March 2, 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was sitting on a totally full bus in Montgomery, Ala., when the driver asked her and three black schoolmates give up the whole row so that a white woman could sit.
Most people know about Parks and the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott that began in 1955, but few know that there were a number of women who refused to give up their seats on the same bus system.
Most of the women were quietly fined, and no one heard much more.
Colvin was the first to really challenge the law.
Now a 69-year-old retiree, Colvin lives in the Bronx.
She remembers taking the bus home from high school on March 2, 1955, as clearly as if it were yesterday.
The bus driver ordered her to get up and she refused, saying she’d paid her fare and it was her constitutional right.
Two police officers put her in handcuffs and arrested her. Her school books went flying off her lap.
“All I remember is that I was not going to walk off the bus voluntarily,” Colvin said.