Claudette!

The woman above has been largely forgotten...She's still alive thankfully....And since we are in the waning days of Black History Month...I thought that I would be remiss if I didn't honor an unsung Black Hero.

When we think of the beginnings of the civil rights movemant, we always think of Rosa Parks and her brave and defiant stance on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama...We all know how she refused to give up her seat on that bus to a white passenger and she was subsequently arrested and black citizens of Montgomery began a boycott of the bus company ,led by a charismatic and then unknown minister named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began the death knell of segregation...

What you don't know is that it had all been done many months before by someone else....

Claudette Covin!!  This is her story!

At age 15 Claudette Colvin was a bookish, bespectacled young woman who was fascinated by lessons about Africa and Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth during Negro History Week at her school.

On March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin says, she channeled the spirit of Sojourner Truth and Harriet  Tubman when she refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a Montgomery, Ala., bus nine months before Rosa Parks committed the same defiant act.Claudette Colvin points out in interviews that the white woman was young and had an available seat opposite her in the same row, but given the Jim Crow custom, there couldn’t be any suggestion that the races were equal, so Claudette Colvin was asked to get up. But she,like Rosa Parks refused.

Not only was her refusal met with an arrest, but the male officers were particularly rough with the 15-year-old. Colvin recalled what happened on the progressive radio program Democracy Now:

 "One kicked at me, and when one—and he knocked the books out of my hand—out of my lap. And then one grabbed one arm, and one grabbed the other, and they manhandled me off the bus. And after I got into the squad car, they handcuffed me through the window ..."

With her act of defiance, Claudette Colvin gained significant attention. Civil rights activists had been looking for a standard-bearer for their cause. Claudette Colvin’s case seemed perfect. But Claudette Colvin herself didn’t fit the bill. For one thing, she was dark-skinned in a movement that had been largely light and middle class.

Decades later, when asked by National Public Radio why she thought Rosa Parks was remembered instead of her, she responded, “She fit the profile. Parks had the right hair and the right look. Her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class.”

Which meant a more acceptable challenger to the white establishment.

There were other factors as well: Rosa Parks was 42 years old at the time, married and a seasoned activist and seamstress who worked for the NAACP. Claudette Colvin was just 15 years old, with few connections to the black professional class in Montgomery.

She was also soon to engage in an affair with a married man and become pregnant. Not exactly the symbol the movement was looking for.

And the rest is as they say history.

 Claudette Colvin’s name was erased from the movement, and for about 50 years, no one heard about her. She lived in virtual obscurity until a few diligent journalists and historians began writing about the almost forgotten civil rights pioneer.

A writer named Phillip Hosse was writing a book called Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, tried to speak with Colvin for four years before she agreed to sit down with him. The condition of her participation was that he would write a book both to teach young people about the civil rights movement and to let them know that she was the first.

In the 2009 National Book Award winner, a fierce personality emerges. Claudette Colvin, without a doubt, was a passionate freedom fighter who deserves to be remembered and celebrated for her contributions to humanity. She is now a retired health worker living in New York City.

At the conclusion of her biography, Claudette Colvin reflects on her contribution to the movement and what she was thinking as a 15-year-old: “Why don’t the adults around here just say something? Say it so they know we don’t accept segregation? 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, ‘That’s not right.’ And I did.”

That Claudette Colvin’s story is largely forgotten and missing from our official  black history is an insult to this courageous women and  other unknown young people who helped changed the course of our country.
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