Girls, Girls, Girls – Claudette Colvin

Good afternoon, everybody. It is midday. It is a lovely Monday, or at least I hope it will be, because it's not actually Monday when I'm recording this, but it will be when it gets released. And if you're listening on Catch up, just insert day here. I hope you're having a great day, no matter what day it is. You are listening to women's radio station. I am Bea Duncan and this is Girls, Girls, Girls, the podcast Rewriting history, one episode at a time. I am so, so excited about this episode. I know that I say this every week, but I really do mean it this time. This story is one that is so important to be told. And it is the life and times of Claudette Colvin, who was essentially the predecessor to Rosa Parks. But as awesome as that sounds, before we get into all of that, let's see who we are celebrating today. So last week I went to see Sylvia Sylvia at the Old Vic. Sylvia is calling itself the British Hamilton. And it is a hip hop musical about Sylvia Pankhurst and the suffragette movement. And it was so, so good. It's still in previews at the moment and there's quite a lot still to be cut. It was about three hours long, but those three hours were very, very well spent. And there was soul, there was rapping, there was dancing, there was feminist history. And if you need any more convincing, which you shouldn't, there are not one, but two sections where Churchill's mother, the character, breaks down into a garage jungle rap and dance. So if that doesn't convince you, I've completely run out of ideas. Please do everything you can to see this musical. It was incredible. I learned heaps and it was just so, so entertaining and moving. So, yes, Sylvia at the Old Vic, go see it. The British Hamilton. You will love it. And I've also decided to open up the celebration to you guys, my lovely listeners. I want to know who you guys want to sell her break. So get in contact with me in any way you see fit. Women's Radio on Instagram and on Twitter. For women's radio station or juju g pod on Twitter, girlsgirlsgirlspod on Instagram. I've got an email address as well, which I've forgotten, but I'm gonna tell you at the end of the podcast, just let me know whether it's a project or just someone in your life that you want to celebrate. I want to know now. I already had one of these come through because I did a little bit of a shout out on my Instagram. My Lovely friend Annie, who wanted to sell her braid. Her mum, which is so lovely. So sending lots of big war vibes to Annie's mum. So I think it's time to talk about Claudette Colvin, the predecessor to Rosa Parks, who nobody seems to know about, who was erased by the history books and also, unfortunately, by her own community. So she was born on September 5, 1939, and she was raised by her great aunt and uncle in the working class neighborhood of Montgomery in Alabama. If that name rings a bell, then just wait, you'll find out why a bit later on. Claudette explains that she remembers her first experience of racial discrimination and segregation at the age of four, which is horrendous. She was in a shop and some white boys came in and started touching her hands, trying to kind of compare the skin. And her mother dragged her away, hit her and told her that she was not allowed to touch white boys, white people. And to have this first experience of being discriminated against or segregated because of your skin color at the age of four, it's a lot at any age. And so for a child, I can hardly imagine even being able to comprehend what was happening. So that is really quite horrific. Claudette went to Booker T. Washington High School, which was like most schools at this time, segregated. And her parents, being working class, didn't have a car. So Claudette had to use the city buses to get to and from school. Claudette was an incredibly hard working student. She was a member of the national association for the Advancement of Colored People Youth Council. And she even said that she aspired to be president one day. I think it's almost unfortunate that this is what I want to celebrate her for, because I'm sure that if she had been living in fairer times, with less racism, less discrimination, she probably would have been celebrated for better things rather than what she ended up. But unfortunately, things worked out a little bit differently for Claudette. So everything went down on March 2, 1955. And now this was nine months before everything happened with Rosa Parks. And it was on one of her trips home from school on the bus. Claudette was 15 years old at the time. I'm sure you're aware of all of this kind of background, but I'm just going to summarise for you. Anyway, at this time, all city buses were segregated. So there was a white section and a black section. And if all the seats in the white section were full and another white person got on the bus, a black person would have to vacate their seat in their section for them for the white person to be able to sit down. On this day, March 2nd, Claudette was sitting down when a young white woman got onto the bus. The bus driver, Robert Clear, demanded that Claudette and the other black women in her row to get up and stand. The other three in the row did. But Claudette, as I'm sure you can imagine, refused to move. She said, he wanted me to give up my seat for a white person, and I would have done it for an elderly person. But this was a young white woman. It was almost the principle of it, I think, for her. To begin with, she didn't feel like the white woman had any more of a right to sit down than she did. Because she was young, she could stand, and especially not in the black section of the bus. And while Claudette was remaining seated at the same time, a young, pregnant black woman named Ruth Hamilton also got on at the same time as the young white woman. And she sat down next to Colvin, too. So the driver asked Colvin and now also Ruth to get up and move again. Claudette was with a classmate called Annie Larkins Price, who remembers that Claudette was just yelling, it's my constitutional right. You know, she'd paid her bus fare. She was sitting down. She's allowed to do that, or she should be, at least. And as you can imagine, I'm sure the police were called and they forced a black man behind to stand up so that Ruth could sit down. But Claudette still had to stand, and she refused again. Imagine that. Just as a side note, calling the police on a 15 year old who's just sitting down on a bus. You kind of would have thought they had more important things to be doing. But, you know, that was the time. And Claudette said that while all of this was happening, all she could think about was an essay that she had been writing about that very day at school, which was about the local custom of preventing black people from trying on clothes in changing rooms. She was kind of feeling incensed because she was remembering a particular time when she needed a pair of shoes. So she had to take a brown paper bag and draw her foot onto it for her mother's take into the store. She said it felt as though Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing down on one shoulder. And so Jeanne Truth's hands were pushing me down on the other shoulder. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail. I wasn't frightened, but disappointed and angry because I knew I was sitting in the right seat. The Driver kept, kept on going, forcing her to get off the bus. And then these two policemen arrived. Thomas J. Ward and Paul Headley. I think it's important to say their names as well because just as much as I want to amplify the voice of Claudette, who was doing an incredible thing here and standing up for herself or her rights, I also want to amplify the voices of those who were not doing great things. I think they also need to be held to account in the history books. So these two policemen boarded the bus, asked Colvin why she wasn't going to give up her seat, and when it became clear she wasn't moving, they knocked all of her books out of her lap, grabbed her by her arms and manhandled her off the bus. She was arrested, charged with disturbing the peace, violating segregation laws and assault of an officer. Again, she was 15 years old, a 15 year old apparently assaulting two police officers. It's laughable, it really is. And disturbing the peace. I can only see a few people who I can think in this scenario were disturbing the peace and it definitely wasn't Claudette. So those were the charges. She was given three charges. And instead of being taken to a juvenile detention center, Claudette was taken to an adult jail. She was put in a small cell with nothing in it but a broken sink and a cot without a mattress. She said, I was scared. And it was really, really frightening. It was like those Western M.O. they put the Bandit in the jail cell and you could hear the keys. I can still vividly hear the click of those keys. Claudette was bailed out by her reverend who told her that she had brought revolution to Montgomery. Which as it will turn out, was 100% correct. She had. After Colvin was released from prison, there were fears that her home was going to be attacked by white people who wanted essentially, I guess, retribution or revenge or something for a little girl wanting to sit down on the bus. So members of her community acted as lookouts for the house and her father sat up all night with a shotgun just in case anyone came. They were especially obviously worried about the KKK turning up. If anyone got wind of that, that could have been disastrous for Claudette and for her family as well. So not only is this 15 year old girl who's just been released from an adult prison with three charges, now her family is having to worry about the safety of themselves from white people who are going to come and try and attack them. So yeah, that is very upsetting to talk about, really. So at this point, let's take a really, really quick break. We're going to come back and we're going to get into the court case, all of the legal proceedings and the aftermath. So don't forget, if you want to catch up with Girls, Girls, Girls or any other podcasts for that matter on the station, you can do so at www.womensradiostation.com WRS Women's Radio Station Voice of Women Worldwide, Sarah's Universal Soul Show. What does your soul or spirituality mean to you? 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Supporting women is our passion. We're currently welcoming donations to help towards our running costs. To keep this important initiative Al to donate, simply head to our website. Every little will help. Welcome back to Girls Girls Girls with me, Vee Duncan here on women's radio station. Of course, today we are talking about Claudette Colvin. We're right in the middle of her story. She was essentially the spark that started the Montgomery bus boycott and eventually the end of bus segregation. And she was also essentially the predecessor to Rosa Parks. So when we left off for that little break, we were right smack bang in the middle of all of the drama. We were about to head into the court proceedings for Claudette. So Claudette was taken to juvenile court on March 18, 1955, and she was represented by a black lawyer from the Montgomery Improvement Association, MIA for short named Fred Gray. She pleaded innocent on all charges, obviously, although not obviously, because a lot of people when they did this, if they did decide to sit down and defy the segregation laws, they would still plead guilty because in their eyes, they had technically violated the law. But for Claudette, she was just like, well, no, because the law is unconstitutional. So I didn't break anything. She was found guilty and they declared her to be the ward of the state. The Montgomery chapter of the NAACP raised money to appeal. And so finally, on May 6, 1955, her case was taken to the Montgomery Circuit Court. Two of the charges were dropped, but the assault of the police officers was maintained, despite Annie Price, who was the classmate who testified for Claudette, insisting there was no assault. Which, of course, we didn't need her to tell us that. We knew that already. But anyway, it's good to know that she had Claudette had people having her back. In response to this absolute injustice, a handful of the members of the local community started the famous boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The NAACP and the MIA in December of 1955, filed a lawsuit for Colvin and for four others. Aurelia Browder, Susie Macdonald, Mary Smith and Janetta Rees. And this court case became known as Browder versus Gayle. On June 5, 1956, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, try saying that three times. Ruled that Montgomery's bus segregation was unconstitutional. And on December 20th of the same year, the Supreme Court agreed and ordered the state of Alabama to end bus segregation permanently. So to recap, because that was a lot of dates and court words and things like that, Claudette refused to stand up. She Was arrested, they appealed and eventually got to the Supreme Court, and Alabama was forced to end their bus segregation. So she was the spark that started the Montgomery bus boycott and the end of segregation in Alabama. But as I'm sure you know, Rosa Parks ended up being the poster girl for the bus boycott, despite her protests taking place around nine months after Claudette said, my mother told me to be quiet about what I did. She told me to let Rosa be the one. White people aren't going to bother Rosa. They like her. Now, it is worth pointing out that Rosa Parks own history has been erased herself. I mean, she is painted as this quiet, tired old woman who had a long day at work and didn't want to get up. That's not the case. She was an ardent social justice warrior. She was part of the naacp, and she'd been doing civil rights activism for years and years and years. She was the secretary of the naacp. So it's obviously not the case that she was given a lot of credit and Colvin wasn't. But it is still the case that Rosa Parks is known. People know that name. It would be hard not to. And yet it's worth remembering and talking about the reasons why Claudette wasn't picked essentially as being heralded by her community as the martyr. So black organizations felt that Rosa was better because she had already done work with the naacp. She was older, her hair, her appearance, clothing looked more middle class. And unfortunately, very soon after the incident on the bus, Claudette found out that she was pregnant. She had been raped by a married white man who she still has never named. She said, nowadays you'd call it statutory rape, but back then it was just the kind of thing that happened, which is heartbreaking. She was a pregnant 15 year old because she'd been raped by a married white man. And that was just the way things were. She said they said they didn't want to use a pregnant teenager because it would be controversial and the people would talk about the pregnancy more than the boycott. Even Rosa Parks herself weighed in on the situation a bit later. And she made a valid point. If the white press got a hold of that information, they would have had a third field day. They'd call her a bad girl and her case wouldn't have a chance, which is very true. So her community was kind of trying to protect her. They didn't want her to be vilified by the white press. But at the same time, there was quite a lot of classism and snobbery around the fact that she was a young pregnant Teen, despite the fact that it had been done without her consent. There was also, unfortunately, a lot of colourism in the situation. Claudette had much darker skin than Rosa, and the organisations felt that it would be better to wait until somebody made the protest with lighter skin because it would be received better. I mean, again, that is just testament to the times. It's not necessarily their fault. They wanted their case to be heard as best as possible, and they knew what the white press and the white courts and the white public would and wouldn't like. But it is still incredibly sad that these reasons are why Claudette has been rubbed out of history by essentially her own community. So she may have sparked the bus boycott, but Rosa Parks definitely took the lead and ended up being much better known. But Claudette said, let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott, but also let them know that the attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation. Her former attorney, Fred Gray, said, this really lovely thing actually about Claudette, which I'm sure will have pepped her up. Despite the lack of credit, she said, Claudette gave us all, all moral courage. If she had not done what she did, I am not sure that we would have been able to mount the support for Mrs. Parkes. Claudette moved to New York in 1958 with her baby, and because of her involvement in a federal court case challenging segregation, she was infamous in her community. She really struggled to find work and her community had kind of ostracized her for being a bit of a troublemaker. She had to drop out of college and obviously now she had a baby. So she lived with her older sister for a while and got a job as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan. It's a real shame that not only did she not get the credit that she deserved for the role that she played in the movement, but it also made quite a huge negative impact on her life. She only really started talking about all of this after she retired in 2004. I guess she just didn't want the notoriety while she was working. And she says she's not angry, she's disappointed. She said she felt like she was getting her Christmas in January rather than the 25th. However, slowly, slowly, very slowly, Claudette has been getting the recognition that she deserves for the part that she played, but she is still having to fight for it. So in 2016, Claudette's family protested the fact that the Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum of African American History And Culture barely had any mention of Claudette. In the History of the Civil Rights Movement section, there is a section for Rosa Parks, which Claudette obviously did not want taken down. She just wanted a little bit more credit. In fact, she wasn't even invited to the opening of this section of the museum, which is insulting. Claudette's sister Gloria said this, which really hits the nail on the head. All we want is the truth. Why does history fail to get it right? Had it not been for Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie MacDonald, Mary Louise Smith, there may not have been a Martin Luther King Parks in the year 2000. Roy White was in charge of opening a Rosa Parks museum in Montgomery, and he asked Claudette to appear in a video about it to tell her story. But Claudette refused. She was pretty mad at her lack of credit. Again, she said they've already called it the Rosa Parks Museum, so they've already made up their minds what the story is, which is true. Probably the biggest honor that Claudette got was that March 2nd, the day that she made her stand or not, as the case may have been, was named Claudette Colvin Day in Montgomery, Alabama. Mayor Todd Strange presented the proclamation and unfortunately, she wasn't able to be there because she was ill. But make sure to mark March 2nd in your calendars. Celebrate Claudette as rightfully as she deserves. This was a real lesson. Researching this, I felt that I learned no matter how selfless people are. For example, Claudette saying she just wanted history to remember and recognize the other people's sacrifices that happened, not necessarily wanted her to be famous or be the face of a revolution. It is still hugely important to amplify those voices and remember our history correctly. It's not about getting credit or getting your just desserts. It's about recognizing that nothing is a one person fight. So many people go into so many different things and I'm not just talking about a political movement or anything like that. So if you take anything from this episode alongside learning about Claudette, I hope that it would be to make sure to notice what people around you are doing and to thank them, no matter how small. Because being noticed for your contribution, even if it is a small contribution to something, it makes a huge difference and it means a lot. You're not looking for a song and dance for a parade. You just want to be recognized. Thank you so much for everyone for tuning in, leaving this on a bit of a life lesson. Whether you're listening live or on catch up, I really do appreciate it. You've been listening to Girls Girls Girls on Women's Radio Station and if you want to catch up with me or anyone on the station, you can head to the presenters page on womensradiostation.com as always, don't forget to go on all the socials. Women's Radio STN on Instagram Twitter girlsgirlsgirlspodisme on Instagram gggpod on Twitter get in contact, let me know how you felt about the episode or if you've got women that you'd like me to cover or indeed someone to celebrate. I'll see you guys next week. Thank you so much for listening. WRS Women's Radio station Voice of Women Worldwide. This is Amy Liu, Voice of China at Women's Radio Station. Welcome to future Classical Woman Awards with me, Stefania Passamonte on Women's Radio Station. After a long day, I like to sit in my bath with a glass of wine and listen to women's radio cameras. Kate, you're listening to in conversation with on Women's Radio Station. To see what other programs we have on Women's Radio station, head to our website, womensradiostation.com do you need mediation? We are the a project charity. We provide convict resolution and community engagement services. Our services include community mediation for neighbour disputes, family mediation for separating couples, special education needs for parents, carers and their children and young adults, as well as workplace mediation and restorative services. To find out more, head to womensradiostation.com or theaproject.co.uk Mirae B Ltd. We are a virtual PA consultancy. We provide remote administrative services. Our offering is diverse. We manage your calendar, we update your client database, we take care of your property in France and in London. We also offer bookkeeping and translation services. Would you like to know more? Please call 077-8684-8998 for further information. Mirae B Limited making the life of the business owner successful. Would you like to host your own radio show? Would you love to be doing what I'm doing right now and be a radio presenter on Women's Radio station? If you're passionate on your subject or topic, we'd like to hear from you, wherever you are in the world, about what's happening in your country and town or city. It's your station, your voice to women of the world. So contact us. Send an email to involvedomensradiostation.com. I'm Isabelle Manavie, an executive coach. Do you want to change a negative into a positive? We can do this by coaching you to rewire your brain using simple visualization techniques. In 20 years of practice, I've seen this transform lives. For more information, look on Women's Radio website. Call me on 079-844-22171. I'm listening. Women's Radio station is a not for profit community interest company. Supporting women is our passion. We're currently welcoming donations to help our running costs to keep this important initiative alive. To donate, simply head to our website. Every little will help.