DOZ Inspirational Biography
Claudette Colvin
Mercy James
“Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended
segregation, but that wasn’t the case at all.” Claudette Colvin.
hile Rosa Parks is famous for being a
black woman who refused to give up
her seat to a white passenger on the
bus, thus ending the bus segregation, she
wasn’t the only black woman to take this
stand, and she certainly wasn’t the first. The
truth is nine months before Rosa Parks refused
to give up her seat on the bus, there was a
15-year-old black girl, Claudette Colvin, who
had refused to give up
her seat on the bus to
a white woman.
slapped her across the face for touching white
boys who had asked her to put her hands next
to theirs to compare skin colour. Claudette was
only four years old at the time.
W
Right from an early age, she developed a
remarkable interest in civil rights activism.
She was very passionate about her beliefs. She
became a member of the NAACP Youth Council
and formed a close
relationship with Rosa
Parks, who was her
overseer. On the 2nd
of March 1955, the
day that she refused
to give up her seat,
she was returning
home from school and
sat in the coloured
section of the bus
as was the custom.
Earlier that day, she
had written a school
paper about the local
tradition that barred
blacks from using
the dressing rooms
in department stores
to try on clothes
before buying. And
in a later interview,
she said concerning
the white woman
Claudette was
born on the 5th of
September 1939 to
Mary Jane Gadson
and C.P. Austin. She
was raised in the
underprivileged black
neighbourhood of
Montgomery, Alabama
and her parents were
so poor that she had
to be adopted by
her mother’s grand
uncle and aunt, Mr
and Mrs Colvin.
What may be her
first experience with
racial dissimilarities
or discrimination
came after her mother
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DOZ Magazine | March 2020