Later, Rev. Councilman Larkin's sister was on the bus in when Colvin was arrested. In the s, Larkin arranged for a street to be named after Colvin. In , the Montgomery Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. March 2 was named Claudette Colvin day in Montgomery.
In a statue of Rosa Parks was unveiled in Montgomery, Alabama, and four granite markers were also unveiled near the statue on the same day to honor four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle , including Colvin. To Become a Registered Nurse. Rosa Parks Biography. The decision in the case, which had been filed by Fred Gray and Charles D.
Langford on behalf of the aforementioned African American women, ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. Two years later, Colvin moved to New York City, where she had her second son, Randy, and worked as a nurse's aide at a Manhattan nursing home.
Much of the writing on civil rights history in Montgomery has focused on the arrest of Parks, another woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus, nine months after Colvin. While Parks has been heralded as a civil rights heroine, Colvin's story has received little notice. Some have tried to change that. While her role in the fight to end segregation in Montgomery may not be widely recognized, Colvin helped advance civil rights efforts in the city.
If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parks," her former attorney, Fred Gray, told Newsweek. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist who refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
Negotiations with the city were going nowhere and a growing number of the boycott's leaders had become convinced that other strategies were necessary. After King's home was bombed, the Montgomery Improvement Association called on Fred Gray to initiate a federal lawsuit. Gray, 25 years old and only recently out of law school, had recently returned to his native Montgomery with a determination to challenge segregation in whatever way he could.
On February 1, , Gray filed the case challenging city and Alabama bus segregation laws. He drew on incidents of discrimination on the buses that preceded Parks's arrest, including Colvin's mistreatment. The case, Browder v. Gray wanted the court to focus on only one issue—whether Montgomery and Alabama laws that required segregated buses were constitutional—and knew that Parks's criminal case should be a separate issue.
The three-judge panel that heard the case ruled in June of that year that city and Alabama laws maintaining segregated buses violated the U. Constitution, specifically the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The city appealed the decision, which was upheld by the Supreme Court, a decision that ended segregation in Montgomery's buses.
After the boycott, Colvin and her family moved to New York, where she remained for 50 years before moving back to Alabama in She worked as a nurse's aide, and it was only after she retired that she began to speak more openly about her actions, often speaking at schools about that day in In recent years, Colvin's role in the early days of the movement has garnered more attention, although she is still frequently overlooked in accounts of the boycott.
A street in Montgomery was named for her and March 2, , was designated Claudette Colvin Day by the city. In December , Colvin was included on one of four granite historical markers dedicated along with the Rosa Parks statue on Dexter Avenue in Montgomery.
Ultimately, civil rights leaders deemed her not the right kind of plaintiff to organize around. There is a myth, however, that they dropped her because she was pregnant.
Colvin was not pregnant when the community decided not to pursue her case. Later in the summer, Colvin found out she had become pregnant by an older man.
When this news came to light, many felt further convinced they had done the right thing in not pursuing her case. Over time, the stories would change so Colvin would be pregnant at the time of her arrest and trial — which was not the case.
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