EDITORIAL ROUNDUP Dec. 19

Decatur (Ala.) Daily

Before Rosa Parks

Sixty-six years after she refused to give up her seat on a racially segregated Montgomery bus, an Alabama woman finally has justice.

No, we’re not talking about Rosa Parks. We’re talking about Claudette Colvin, who was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on March 2, 1955, months before Parks was arrested on Dec. 1 of the same year.

Parks’ civil disobedience in the face of Alabama’s Jim Crow edifice ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott, made a national figure out of one of the boycott’s leaders, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and is now widely seen as the start of the civil rights movement.

Colvin’s steadfastness in the face of injustice may have come first, but it didn’t have near the impact. Yet it was just as courageous, if not even more so, because Colvin, then just 15, acted on her own.

This is not to diminish Parks’ stand, but a kind of mythology has grown up around her refusal to give up her seat and subsequent arrest.

Many, possibly even most people have the image of a woman acting spontaneously, fed up with the injustice she faced every day.

In fact, Parks, then a 42-year-old seamstress, was active with the local NAACP, which carefully planned Parks’ protest — after deciding Parks would make an excellent public face for the movement — and the subsequent boycott.

The full story is gaining recognition, but the myth still persists. One need look no further than a 2018 episode of the British science fiction series “Doctor Who,” which centered on a plot by a time traveler to derail the civil rights movement simply by causing Parks to miss the bus.

The full story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott highlights the importance of planning and organization. Changing the world for the better rarely happens by accident.

That’s why Parks’ refusal to give up her seat sparked a revolution, but Colvin’s did not.

On March 2, 1955, Colvin was one of two Black girls on a segregated Montgomery bus. The bus driver called police and complained that the two girls were sitting too close to two white girls on the bus, in violation of segregation laws. When confronted by police, one of the girls changed seats. Colvin did not.

She was arrested, tried in juvenile court, which declared her a delinquent, and placed on probation “pending good behavior,” according to The Associated Press. Colvin was never told when or if she had completed probation.

This was everyday life for Black Alabamians under Jim Crow. The law was against you, and you never knew when or if it might come down like a hammer.

In October, Colvin decided she wanted her record expunged.

“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 at the time in a sworn statement.

Last week, after a judge granted her request, she said, “When I think about why I’m seeking to have my name cleared by the state, it is because I believe if that happened it would show the generation growing up now that progress is possible, and things do get better. It will inspire them to make the world better.”

Colvin is leaving a legacy of her own. Maybe it won’t have her portrayed on British TV, but it’s important nonetheless, especially right now.

“Progress is possible, and things do get better,” she said. And while there is more to do, things have gotten better.