175-465: Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin ; September 5, 1939) is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide . On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama , for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. It occurred nine months before the similar, more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks , secretary of
350-671: A Thurgood Marshall , a Martin Luther King or a Rosa Parks ." In 2000, Troy University at Montgomery opened the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery to honor the town's place in civil rights history. Roy White, who was in charge of most of the project, asked Colvin if she would like to appear in a video to tell her story, but Colvin refused. She said, "They've already called it the Rosa Parks museum, so they've already made up their minds what
525-597: A heart attack at age 37. Her son Randy is an accountant in Atlanta and father of Colvin's four grandchildren. Colvin was a predecessor to the Montgomery bus boycott movement of 1955, which gained national attention. But she rarely told her story after moving to New York City. The discussions in the black community began to focus on black enterprise rather than integration, although national civil rights legislation did not pass until 1964 and 1965. NPR 's Margot Adler has said that black organizations believed that Rosa Parks would be
700-535: A 14-year-old African American from Chicago, visited his relatives in Money, Mississippi , for the summer. He allegedly had an interaction with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a small grocery store that violated the norms of Mississippi culture, and Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam brutally murdered young Emmett Till. They beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River . Three days later, Till's body
875-468: A backlash for his involvement with white actress Kim Novak . Davis briefly married a black dancer in 1958 to protect himself from mob violence. In 1958, officers in Virginia entered the home of Mildred and Richard Loving and dragged them out of bed for living together as an interracial couple, on the basis that "any white person intermarry with a colored person"— or vice versa—each party "shall be guilty of
1050-516: A barber from Montgomery. He was a member of the NAACP , which at the time was collecting money to support the defense of the Scottsboro Boys , a group of black men falsely accused of raping two white women. Rosa took numerous jobs, ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide. At her husband's urging, she finished her high school studies in 1933, at a time when fewer than 7% of African Americans had
1225-464: A better figure for a test case for integration because she was an adult, had a job, and had a middle-class appearance. They felt she had the maturity to handle being at the center of potential controversy. Colvin was not the only woman of the Civil Rights Movement who was left out of the history books. In the south, male ministers made up the overwhelming majority of leaders. This was partially
1400-583: A bus boycott was considered and rejected. But when Rosa Parks was arrested in December, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson of the Montgomery Women's Political Council put the bus boycott protest in motion. Late that night, she, John Cannon (chairman of the Business Department at Alabama State University ) and others mimeographed and distributed thousands of leaflets calling for a boycott. The eventual success of
1575-468: A combined strategy of direct action , nonviolence , nonviolent resistance , and many events described as civil disobedience , giving rise to the civil rights movement of 1954 to 1968. A. Philip Randolph had planned a march on Washington, D.C., in 1941 to support demands for elimination of employment discrimination in the defense industry ; he called off the march when the Roosevelt administration met
1750-557: A courageous act on her behalf and on behalf of a community of affected people". Also in 2021, a mural honoring Colvin was unveiled, along Claudette Colvin Drive, in Montgomery, Alabama . Former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove memorialized Colvin in her poem "Claudette Colvin Goes To Work", published in her 1999 book On the Bus with Rosa Parks ; folk singer John McCutcheon turned this poem into
1925-514: A decade". Parks continued her work as an anti-rape activist five years later when she helped organize protests in support of Gertrude Perkins, a black woman who was raped by two white Montgomery police officers. Although never a member of the Communist Party , she attended meetings with her husband. The notorious Scottsboro case had been brought to prominence by the Communist Party. In
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#17330861485702100-484: A felony" and face prison terms of five years. Invigorated by the victory of Brown and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the primary tool to bring about desegregation . They were faced with " massive resistance " in the South by proponents of racial segregation and voter suppression . In defiance, African-American activists adopted
2275-485: A front-page article in the Montgomery Advertiser helped spread the word. At a church rally that night, those attending agreed unanimously to continue the boycott until they were treated with the level of courtesy they expected, until black drivers were hired, and until seating in the middle of the bus was handled on a first-come basis. The next day, Parks was tried on charges of disorderly conduct and violating
2450-489: A good student, Colvin had difficulty connecting with her peers in school due to grief. She was also a member of the NAACP Youth Council , where she formed a close relationship with her mentor, Rosa Parks . In 1955, Colvin was a student at the segregated Booker T. Washington High School in the city. She relied on the city's buses to get to and from school because her family did not own a car. The majority of customers on
2625-531: A high-school diploma. In December 1943, Parks became active in the civil rights movement , joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was elected secretary at a time when this was considered a woman's job. She later said, "I was the only woman there, and they needed a secretary, and I was too timid to say no." She continued as secretary until 1957. She worked for the local NAACP leader Edgar Nixon , even though he maintained that "Women don't need to be nowhere but in
2800-594: A housekeeper and seamstress for Clifford and Virginia Durr , a white couple. Politically liberal , the Durrs became her friends. They encouraged—and eventually helped sponsor—Parks in the summer of 1955 to attend the Highlander Folk School , an education center for activism in workers' rights and racial equality in Monteagle, Tennessee . There Parks was mentored by the veteran organizer Septima Clark . In 1945, despite
2975-538: A laboratory school set up by the Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes for secondary education, but dropped out to care for her grandmother and later her mother, after they became ill. Around the turn of the 20th century, the former Confederate states had adopted new constitutions and electoral laws that effectively disenfranchised black voters and, in Alabama, many poor white voters as well. Under
3150-419: A local ordinance. The trial lasted 30 minutes. After being found guilty and fined $ 10, plus $ 4 in court costs (a total of $ 161.11 as of 12 Mar 2024), Parks appealed her conviction and formally challenged the legality of racial segregation. In a 1992 interview with National Public Radio 's Lynn Neary, Parks recalled: I did not want to be mistreated, I did not want to be deprived of a seat that I had paid for. It
3325-563: A neighborhood a character or property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in a neighborhood." The result was the development of all-black ghettos in the North and West, where much housing was older, as well as South. The first anti-miscegenation law was passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 1691, criminalizing interracial marriage . In
3500-514: A network of chapters as the NAACP did. It offered training and leadership assistance for local efforts to fight segregation. The headquarters organization raised funds, mostly from Northern sources, to support such campaigns. It made nonviolence both its central tenet and its primary method of confronting racism. In 1959, Septima Clarke , Bernice Robinson, and Esau Jenkins , with the help of Myles Horton 's Highlander Folk School in Tennessee , began
3675-465: A plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for blacks were routed to the lowest status and restrictive in potential mobility. Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants , redlining and racial steering ". The Great Migration resulted in many African Americans becoming urbanized, and they began to realign from
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#17330861485703850-540: A police officer was upheld. Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. In high school, she had high ambitions of political activity. She dreamed of becoming the President of the United States . Her political inclination was fueled in part by an incident with her schoolmate, Jeremiah Reeves ; his case was the first time that she had witnessed the work of the NAACP. Reeves was found having sexual intercourse with
4025-479: A policeman.'" The police arrived and convinced a black man sitting behind the two women to move so that Mrs. Hamilton could move back, but Colvin still refused to move. She was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested by the two policemen, Thomas J. Ward and Paul Headley. This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary Rosa Parks was arrested for the same offense. Colvin later said: "My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. She told me to let Rosa be
4200-436: A product of the outward face the NAACP was trying to broadcast and partially a product of the women fearing losing their jobs, which were often in the public school system. In 2005, Colvin told the Montgomery Advertiser that she would not have changed her decision to remain seated on the bus: "I feel very, very proud of what I did," she said. "I do feel like what I did was a spark and it caught on." "I'm not disappointed. Let
4375-586: A row of 4 seats in the " colored " section in favor of a white female passenger who had complained to the driver, once the "white" section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation, but the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) believed that she was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, and she helped inspire
4550-584: A ruling declaring the state of Alabama and Montgomery's laws mandating public bus segregation as unconstitutional. State and local officials appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court . The Supreme Court summarily affirmed the District Court decision on November 13, 1956. One month later, the Supreme Court declined to reconsider, and on December 20, 1956, the court ordered Montgomery and
4725-588: A section dedicated to Rosa Parks, which Colvin does not want taken away, but her family's goal is to get the historical record right, and for officials to include Colvin's part of history. Colvin was not invited officially for the formal dedication of the museum, which opened to the public in September 2016. "All we want is the truth, why does history fail to get it right?" Colvin's sister, Gloria Laster, said. "Had it not been for Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, there may not have been
4900-533: A song, which was first publicly performed in Charlottesville, Virginia's Paramount Theater in 2006. Young adult book Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice , by Phillip Hoose , was published in 2009 and won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. A re-enactment of Colvin's resistance is portrayed in a 2014 episode of the comedy TV series Drunk History about Montgomery, Alabama. She
5075-577: A speech in Charleston, Illinois in 1858, Abraham Lincoln stated, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people". By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes. By 1924, the ban on interracial marriage was still in force in 29 states. While interracial marriage had been legal in California since 1948, in 1957 actor Sammy Davis Jr. faced
5250-505: A watershed historical moment without Mamie finding the strength to make her private grief a public matter." The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the black community throughout the U.S. The murder and resulting trial ended up markedly impacting the views of several young black activists. Joyce Ladner referred to such activists as the "Emmett Till generation." One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on
5425-477: A white woman in her family's grocery store, whose killers were tried and acquitted—and I just couldn't go back." Blake said, "Why don't you stand up?" Parks responded, "I don't think I should have to stand up." Blake called the police to arrest Parks. When recalling the incident for Eyes on the Prize , a 1987 public television series on the Civil Rights Movement, Parks said, "When he saw me still sitting, he asked if I
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5600-516: A white woman who claimed she was raped, though Reeves claims their relations were consensual. He was executed for his alleged crimes. Together with Aurelia S. Browder , Susie McDonald , Mary Louise Smith , and Jeanetta Reese, Colvin was one of the five plaintiffs in the court case of Browder v. Gayle . Jeanetta Reese later resigned from the case. The case, organized and filed in federal court by civil rights attorney Fred Gray , challenged city bus segregation in Montgomery as unconstitutional. During
5775-495: A white world. Although Parks's autobiography recounts early memories of the kindness of white strangers, she could not ignore the racism of her society. When the Ku Klux Klan marched down the street in front of their house, Parks recalls her grandfather guarding the front door with a shotgun. The Montgomery Industrial School , founded and staffed by white northerners for black children, was burned twice by arsonists. Its faculty
5950-503: Is disappointed. She said she felt as if she was "getting [her] Christmas in January rather than the 25th." I don’t think there’s room for many more icons. I think that history only has room enough for certain—you know, how many icons can you choose? So, you know, I think you compare history, like—most historians say Columbus discovered America, and it was already populated. But they don’t say that Columbus discovered America; they should say, for
6125-434: The 15th Amendment (1870) that gave black males the right to vote (only males could vote in the U.S. at the time). From 1865 to 1877, the United States underwent a turbulent Reconstruction era during which the federal government tried to establish free labor and the civil rights of freedmen in the South after the end of slavery. Many whites resisted the social changes, leading to the formation of insurgent movements such as
6300-688: The American Civil War , eight serving presidents had owned slaves , almost four million black people remained enslaved in the South , generally only white men with property could vote, and the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites . Following the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed, including the 13th Amendment (1865) that ended slavery; the 14th Amendment (1869) that gave black people citizenship, adding their total for Congressional apportionment ; and
6475-532: The American Political Science Review , nonviolent civil rights protests boosted vote shares for the Democratic party in presidential elections in nearby counties, but violent protests substantially boosted white support for Republicans in counties near to the violent protests. Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in
6650-732: The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), whose members attacked black and white Republicans in order to maintain white supremacy . In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant , the U.S. Army, and U.S. Attorney General Amos T. Akerman , initiated a campaign to repress the KKK under the Enforcement Acts . Some states were reluctant to enforce the federal measures of the act. In addition, by the early 1870s, other white supremacist and insurgent paramilitary groups arose that violently opposed African-American legal equality and suffrage, intimidating and suppressing black voters, and assassinating Republican officeholders. However, if
6825-813: The March on Washington in 1963, moderates in the movement worked with the United States Congress to achieve the passage of several significant pieces of federal legislation that authorized oversight and enforcement of civil rights laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned all discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, including in schools, employment, and public accommodations . The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights for minorities and authorized oversight of registration and elections in areas with historic under-representation of minority voters. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 forbade property owners from discriminating in
7000-641: The Tuskegee Institute , to dine at the White House , making him the first African American to attend an official dinner there. "The invitation was roundly criticized by southern politicians and newspapers." Washington persuaded the president to appoint more blacks to federal posts in the South and to try to boost African-American leadership in state Republican organizations. However, these actions were resisted by both white Democrats and white Republicans as an unwanted federal intrusion into state politics. During
7175-502: The Women's Political Council (WPC), about the Parks case. Robinson believed it important to seize the opportunity and stayed up all night mimeographing over 35,000 handbills announcing a bus boycott. The Women's Political Council was the first group to officially endorse the boycott. On Sunday, December 4, 1955, plans for the Montgomery bus boycott were announced at black churches in the area, and
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7350-430: The civil rights movement , best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott . The United States Congress has honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". Parks became an NAACP activist in 1943, participating in several high-profile civil rights campaigns. On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama , Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake 's order to vacate
7525-441: The "white seats" in the front of the bus were filled until white people were standing, any African Americans were supposed to get up from nearby seats to make room for whites, move further to the back, and stand in the aisle if there were no free seats in that section. When a white woman who got on the bus was left standing in the front, the bus driver, Robert W. Cleere, commanded Colvin and three other black women in her row to move to
7700-466: The 1940s, Parks and her husband were members of the League of Women Voters . Sometime soon after 1944, she held a brief job at Maxwell Air Force Base , which, despite its location in Montgomery, Alabama , did not permit racial segregation because it was federal property. She rode on its integrated trolley. Speaking to her biographer, Parks noted, "You might just say Maxwell opened my eyes up." Parks worked as
7875-425: The 1950s and 1960s, the nonviolent protesting of the civil rights movement caused definite tension, which gained national attention. In order to prepare for protests physically and psychologically, demonstrators received training in nonviolence. According to former civil rights activist Bruce Hartford, there are two main components of nonviolence training. There is the philosophical method, which involves understanding
8050-456: The Alabama state court system. Parks played an important part in raising international awareness of the plight of African Americans and the civil rights struggle. King wrote in his 1958 book Stride Toward Freedom that Parks's arrest was the catalyst rather than the cause of the protest: "The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices." He wrote, "Actually, no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually
8225-690: The Colvins as their parents and took their last name. When they took Claudette in, the Colvins lived in Pine Level , a small country town in Montgomery County , the same town where Rosa Parks grew up. When Colvin was eight years old, the Colvins moved to King Hill, a poor black neighborhood in Montgomery where she spent the rest of her childhood. Two days before Colvin's 13th birthday, Delphine died of polio. Not long after, in September 1952, Colvin started attending Booker T. Washington High School . Despite being
8400-535: The European people, that is, you know, their discovery of the new world. Colvin and her family have been fighting for recognition for her action. In 2016, the Smithsonian Institution and its National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) were challenged by Colvin and her family, who asked that Colvin be given a more prominent mention in the history of the civil rights movement. The NMAAHC has
8575-570: The Jim Crow laws and discrimination by registrars, she succeeded in registering to vote on her third try. In August 1955, black teenager Emmett Till was brutally murdered after reportedly flirting with a young white woman while visiting relatives in Mississippi . On November 27, 1955, four days before she would make her stand on the bus, Rosa Parks attended a mass meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery that addressed this case, as well as
8750-623: The Montgomery Improvement Association, joined with other church leaders who had led similar boycott efforts, such as C. K. Steele of Tallahassee and T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, and other activists such as Fred Shuttlesworth , Ella Baker , A. Philip Randolph , Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levison , to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The SCLC, with its headquarters in Atlanta , Georgia , did not attempt to create
8925-453: The Montgomery bus boycott to demand a bus system in which passengers would be treated equally. The organization was led by Jo Ann Robinson, a member of the Women's Political Council who had been waiting for the opportunity to boycott the bus system. Following Rosa Parks' arrest, Jo Ann Robinson mimeographed 52,500 leaflets calling for a boycott. They were distributed around the city and helped gather
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#17330861485709100-779: The Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and leader of the Pullman Porters Union , and her friend Clifford Durr bailed Parks out of jail that evening. Parks did not originate the idea of protesting segregation with a bus sit-in . Those preceding her included Bayard Rustin in 1942, Irene Morgan in 1946, Lillie Mae Bradford in 1951, Sarah Louise Keys in 1952, and the members of the ultimately successful Browder v. Gayle 1956 lawsuit ( Claudette Colvin , Aurelia Browder , Susie McDonald , and Mary Louise Smith ) who were arrested in Montgomery for not giving up their bus seats months before Parks. Nixon conferred with Jo Ann Robinson , an Alabama State College professor and member of
9275-455: The Mt. Zion AME Zion Church to discuss boycott strategies. At that time, Parks was introduced but not asked to speak, despite a standing ovation and calls from the crowd for her to speak; when she asked if she should say something, the reply was, "Why, you've said enough." This movement also sparked riots leading up to the 1956 Sugar Bowl . The group agreed that a new organization was needed to lead
9450-439: The NAACP and the national civil rights movement obtained federal court orders to integrate the prestigious Little Rock Central High School in September, 1957. The Nine faced intense harassment and threats of violence from white parents and students, as well as organized white supremacy groups. The enraged opposition emphasized miscegenation as the threat to white society. Arkansas Governor , Orval Faubus , claiming his only goal
9625-461: The Nine were teased and ridiculed every day. In the city compromise efforts all failed and political tensions continued to fester. A year later in September 1958 the Supreme Court ruled that all the city's high schools had to be integrated immediately. Governor Faubus and the legislature responded by immediately shutting down all the public high schools in the city for the entire 1958–1959 school year, despite
9800-479: The North to enhance their prospects in the Great Migration also faced barriers in employment and housing. Over the following century, various efforts were made by African Americans to secure their legal and civil rights, such as the civil rights movements of 1865–1896 and of 1896–1954 . The movement was characterized by nonviolent mass protests and civil disobedience following highly publicized events such as
9975-626: The RCNL, Howard led campaigns to expose brutality by the Mississippi state highway patrol and to encourage blacks to make deposits in the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Nashville which, in turn, gave loans to civil rights activists who were victims of a "credit squeeze" by the White Citizens' Councils . After Claudette Colvin was arrested for not giving up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in March 1955,
10150-809: The Republican to the Democratic Party, especially because of opportunities under the New Deal of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Substantially under pressure from African-American supporters who began the March on Washington Movement , President Roosevelt issued the first federal order banning discrimination and created the Fair Employment Practice Committee . After both World Wars, black veterans of
10325-463: The South, and black education was always underfunded. Parks recalled going to elementary school in Pine Level, where school buses took white students to their new school and black students had to walk to theirs: I'd see the bus pass every day ... But to me, that was a way of life; we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and
10500-430: The South." From 1910 to 1970, blacks sought better lives by migrating north and west out of the South. A total of nearly seven million blacks left the South in what was known as the Great Migration , most during and after World War II. So many people migrated that the demographics of some previously black-majority states changed to a white majority (in combination with other developments). The rapid influx of blacks altered
10675-467: The anniversary of her arrest, December 1. Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama , on February 4, 1913, to Leona (née Edwards), a teacher, and James McCauley, a carpenter . In addition to African ancestry, one of Parks's great-grandfathers was Scots-Irish , and one of her great-grandmothers was a part– Native American slave. As a child, she suffered from chronic tonsillitis and
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#173308614857010850-462: The annual Hampton Negro Conference in Virginia, said that "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage-earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South. There seems to be an apparent effort throughout the North, especially in the cities to debar the colored worker from all the avenues of higher remunerative labor, which makes it more difficult to improve his economic condition even than in
11025-780: The appointment of African American David Jones to the school board in 1953, convinced numerous white and black citizens that Greensboro was heading in a progressive direction. Integration in Greensboro occurred rather peacefully compared to the process in Southern states such as Alabama, Arkansas , and Virginia where " massive resistance " was practiced by top officials and throughout the states. In Virginia, some counties closed their public schools rather than integrate, and many white Christian private schools were founded to accommodate students who used to go to public schools. Even in Greensboro, much local resistance to desegregation continued, and in 1969,
11200-431: The attention of civil rights leaders. After the city rejected many of its suggested reforms, the NAACP, led by E. D. Nixon , pushed for full desegregation of public buses. With the support of most of Montgomery's 50,000 African Americans, the boycott lasted for 381 days, until the local ordinance segregating African Americans and whites on public buses was repealed. Ninety percent of African Americans in Montgomery partook in
11375-440: The back. The other three moved, but another black woman, Ruth Hamilton, who was pregnant, got on and sat next to Colvin. The driver looked at the women in his mirror. "He asked us both to get up. [Mrs. Hamilton] said she was not going to get up and that she had paid her fare and that she didn't feel like standing," recalls Colvin. "So I told him I was not going to get up either. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get
11550-464: The beginning, but he says, 'Let me have these seats.' And the other three people moved, but I didn't." The black man sitting next to her gave up his seat. Parks moved, but toward the window seat; she did not get up to move to the redesignated colored section. Parks later said about being asked to move to the rear of the bus, "I thought of Emmett Till —a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending
11725-490: The black community to boycott the Montgomery buses for over a year. The case became bogged down in the state courts, but the federal Montgomery bus lawsuit Browder v. Gayle resulted in a November 1956 decision that bus segregation is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Parks's act of defiance and the Montgomery bus boycott became important symbols of
11900-733: The boycott effort if it were to continue. Rev. Ralph Abernathy suggested the name " Montgomery Improvement Association " (MIA). The name was adopted, and the MIA was formed. Its members elected as their president Martin Luther King Jr. , a relative newcomer to Montgomery, who was a young and mostly unknown minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church . That Monday night, 50 leaders of the African-American community gathered to discuss actions to respond to Parks's arrest. Edgar Nixon ,
12075-667: The boycott for 381 days. Dozens of public buses stood idle for months, severely damaging the bus transit company's finances, until the city repealed its law requiring segregation on public buses following the US Supreme Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that it was unconstitutional. Parks was not included as a plaintiff in the Browder decision because the attorney Fred Gray concluded the courts would perceive they were attempting to circumvent her prosecution on her charges working their way through
12250-462: The boycott made its spokesman Martin Luther King Jr. , a nationally known figure. It also inspired other bus boycotts, such as the successful Tallahassee, Florida boycott of 1956–57. This movement also sparked the 1956 Sugar Bowl riots in Atlanta which later became a major organizing center of the civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King Jr. In 1957, King and Ralph Abernathy , the leaders of
12425-539: The boycotts, which reduced bus revenue significantly, as they comprised the majority of the riders. This movement also sparked riots leading up to the 1956 Sugar Bowl . In November 1956, the United States Supreme Court upheld a district court ruling in the case of Browder v. Gayle and ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated, ending the boycott. Local leaders established the Montgomery Improvement Association to focus their efforts. Martin Luther King Jr.
12600-549: The bus again from the back door. When Parks exited the vehicle, Blake drove off without her. Parks waited for the next bus, determined never to ride with Blake again. After working all day, Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus, a General Motors Old Look bus belonging to the Montgomery City Lines , around 6 pm, Thursday, December 1, 1955, in downtown Montgomery. She paid her fare and sat in an empty seat in
12775-399: The bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks later informed Till's mother that her decision to stay in her seat was guided by the image she still vividly recalled of Till's brutalized remains. The glass topped casket that was used for Till's Chicago funeral was found in a cemetery garage in 2009. Till had been reburied in a different casket after being exhumed in 2005. Till's family decided to donate
12950-481: The bus system were African American, but they were discriminated against by its custom of segregated seating. Colvin was a member of the NAACP Youth Council and had been learning about the civil rights movement in school. On March 2, 1955, she was returning home from school. She sat in the colored section about two seats away from an emergency exit, in a Capitol Heights bus. If the bus became so crowded that all
13125-437: The buses Monday. It rained that day, but the black community persevered in their boycott. Some rode in carpools, while others traveled in black-operated cabs that charged the same fare as the bus, 10 cents (equivalent to $ 1.14 in 2023). Most of the remainder of the 40,000 black commuters walked, some as far as 20 miles (30 km). That evening after the success of the one-day boycott, a group of 16 to 18 people gathered at
13300-453: The case known as Brown II , the Court ordered segregation to be phased out over time, "with all deliberate speed". Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) did not overturn Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Plessy v. Ferguson was segregation in transportation modes. Brown v. Board of Education dealt with segregation in education. Brown v. Board of Education did set in motion
13475-519: The cases she and the Montgomery NAACP had worked on—and yet, the two men still walked free. In 1900, Montgomery had passed a city ordinance to segregate bus passengers by race. Conductors were empowered to assign seats to achieve that goal. According to the law, no passenger would be required to move or give up their seat and stand if the bus was crowded and no other seats were available. Over time and by custom, however, Montgomery bus drivers adopted
13650-506: The city of Anniston, Alabama , two black ministers were brutally beaten for attempting to integrate the public library. Though there was resistance and violence, the integration of libraries was generally quicker than the integration of other public institutions. The situation for blacks outside the South was somewhat better (in most states they could vote and have their children educated, though they still faced discrimination in housing and jobs). In 1900 Reverend Matthew Anderson, speaking at
13825-804: The civil rights movement's peak in the mid-1960s, and still faced discrimination in jobs, housing, education and politics. A wave of riots and protests in Black communities in the 1960s, including in Los Angeles in 1965 , in Newark in 1967 , and in Chicago in 1968 following King's assassination lessened support from the White middle class. By the early 21st century, though " affirmative action " programs had expanded opportunities for Black and other minorities, Black income levels and life expectancy remained lower than that of Whites. Before
14000-622: The constitutionality of those state laws that required racial segregation in public facilities in its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson , legitimizing them through the " separate but equal " doctrine. Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with Jim Crow laws, with signs used to show blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. For those places that were racially mixed, non-whites had to wait until all white customers were served first. Elected in 1912, President Woodrow Wilson gave in to demands by Southern members of his cabinet and ordered segregation of workplaces throughout
14175-560: The court case, Colvin described her arrest: "I kept saying, 'He has no civil right... this is my constitutional right ... you have no right to do this.' And I just kept blabbing things out, and I never stopped. That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person." Browder v. Gayle made its way through the courts. On June 5, 1956, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama issued
14350-513: The court majority opinion that Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group. The lawyers from the NAACP had to gather plausible evidence in order to win the case of Brown vs. Board of Education . Their method of addressing
14525-413: The cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.'" After her arrest, Parks became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement but suffered hardships as a result. Due to economic sanctions used against activists, she lost her job at the department store. Her husband lost his job as a barber at Maxwell Air Force Base after his boss forbade him to talk about his wife or
14700-719: The demand by issuing Executive Order 8802 , which barred racial discrimination and created an agency to oversee compliance with the order. The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation that had typified the civil rights movement during the first half of the 20th century broadened after Brown to a strategy that emphasized " direct action ": boycotts, sit-ins , Freedom Rides , marches or walks, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance, standing in line, and, at times, civil disobedience. Churches, local grassroots organizations, fraternal societies, and black-owned businesses mobilized volunteers to participate in broad-based actions. This
14875-456: The demographics of Northern and Western cities; happening at a period of expanded European, Hispanic, and Asian immigration, it added to social competition and tensions, with the new migrants and immigrants battling for a place in jobs and housing. Reflecting social tensions after World War I, as veterans struggled to return to the workforce and labor unions were organizing, the Red Summer of 1919
15050-559: The district court in 2021, with the support of the district attorney for the county where the charges were brought more than 66 years earlier. Claudette Colvin was born Claudette Austin in Montgomery, Alabama , on September 5, 1939, to Mary Jane Gadson and C. P. Austin. When Austin abandoned the family, Gadson was unable to financially support her children. Colvin and her younger sister, Delphine, were taken in by their great aunt and uncle, Mary Anne and Q. P. Colvin, whose daughter, Velma, had already moved out. Colvin and her sister referred to
15225-402: The early nineteenth century, and remained a member throughout her life. McCauley attended rural schools until the age of eleven. Before that, her mother taught her "a good deal about sewing." She started piecing quilts from around the age of six, as her mother and grandmother were making quilts, she put her first quilt together by herself around the age of ten, which was unusual, as quilting
15400-575: The entire process of developing and training the mental, physical and moral powers and capabilities of human beings". Risa Goluboff wrote that the NAACP's intention was to show the Courts that African American children were the victims of school segregation and their futures were at risk. The Court ruled that both Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had established the "separate but equal" standard in general, and Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899), which had applied that standard to schools,
15575-428: The events of the day, Parks said, "When that white driver stepped back toward us, when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night." By Parks's account, Blake said, "Y'all better make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats." Three of them complied. Parks said, "The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at
15750-575: The family court in Montgomery County, Alabama to have her juvenile record expunged . Daryl Bailey, the District Attorney for the county, supported her motion, stating: "Her actions back in March of 1955 were conscientious, not criminal; inspired, not illegal; they should have led to praise and not prosecution". The judge ordered that the juvenile record be expunged and destroyed in December 2021, stating that Colvin's refusal had "been recognized as
15925-402: The federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971. Many Northern cities also had de facto segregation policies, which resulted in a vast gulf in educational resources between black and white communities. In Harlem , New York, for example, neither a single new school was built since
16100-547: The federal government. The early 20th century is a period often referred to as the " nadir of American race relations ", when the number of lynchings was highest. While tensions and civil rights violations were most intense in the South, social discrimination affected African Americans in other regions as well. At the national level, the Southern bloc controlled important committees in Congress, defeated passage of federal laws against lynching, and exercised considerable power beyond
16275-514: The first Citizenship Schools in South Carolina 's Sea Islands . They taught literacy to enable blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success and tripled the number of black voters on Johns Island . SCLC took over the program and duplicated its results elsewhere. In the spring of 1951, black students in Virginia protested their unequal status in the state's segregated educational system. Students at Moton High School protested
16450-410: The first row of back seats reserved for blacks in the "colored" section. Near the middle of the bus, her row was directly behind the ten seats reserved for white passengers. Initially, she did not notice that the bus driver was the same man, James F. Blake, who had left her in the rain in 1943. As the bus traveled along its regular route, all of the white-only seats in the bus filled up. The bus reached
16625-445: The front to pay the fare, then disembark and reenter through the rear door. For years, the black community had complained that the situation was unfair. Parks said, "My resisting being mistreated on the bus did not begin with that particular arrest. I did a lot of walking in Montgomery." One day in 1943, Parks boarded a bus and paid the fare. She then moved to a seat, but driver James F. Blake told her to follow city rules and enter
16800-604: The funeral in Jet is credited as a crucial moment in the civil rights era for displaying in vivid detail the violent racism that was being directed at black people in America. In a column for The Atlantic , Vann R. Newkirk wrote: "The trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of white supremacy ". The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-white jury . "Emmett's murder," historian Tim Tyson writes, "would never have become
16975-469: The future overturning of 'separate but equal'. On May 18, 1954, Greensboro, North Carolina , became the first city in the South to publicly announce that it would abide by the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling. "It is unthinkable,' remarked School Board Superintendent Benjamin Smith, 'that we will try to [override] the laws of the United States." This positive reception for Brown, together with
17150-444: The hand of Harriet Tubman pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth pushing down on the other." Colvin was handcuffed, arrested, and forcibly removed from the bus. She shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated. Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one." The police officers who took her to
17325-452: The harm it did to all the students. The decision to integrate the school was a landmark event in the civil rights movement, and the students' bravery and determination in the face of violent opposition is remembered as a key moment in American history. The city and state were entangled in very expensive legal disputes for decades, while suffering a reputation for hatred and obstruction. During
17500-427: The individual person's attitude and mental response to crises and violence" (Civil Rights Movement Archive). Hartford and activists like him, who trained in tactical nonviolence, considered it necessary in order to ensure physical safety, instill discipline, teach demonstrators how to demonstrate, and form mutual confidence among demonstrators (Civil Rights Movement Archive). For many, the concept of nonviolent protest
17675-434: The injustice of segregation, a young preacher named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. may never have attracted national attention, and America probably would not have had his voice for the Civil Rights Movement. The Little-Known Heroes: Claudette Colvin , a children's picture book by Kaushay and Spencer Ford, was published in 2021. In 2022, a biopic of Colvin titled Spark written by Niceole R. Levy and directed by Anthony Mackie
17850-426: The issue of school segregation was to enumerate several arguments. One pertained to having exposure to interracial contact in a school environment. It was argued that interracial contact would, in turn, help prepare children to live with the pressures that society exerts in regard to race and thereby afford them a better chance of living in a democracy. In addition, another argument emphasized how "'education' comprehends
18025-512: The kitchen." When Parks asked, "Well, what about me?", he replied: "I need a secretary and you are a good one." In 1944, in her capacity as secretary, she investigated the gang-rape of Recy Taylor , a black woman from Abbeville, Alabama . Parks and other civil rights activists organized " The Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor", launching what the Chicago Defender called "the strongest campaign for equal justice to be seen in
18200-455: The landmark Supreme Court case of Smith v. Allwright (1944), which prohibited white primaries , progress was made in increasing black political participation in the Rim South and Acadiana – although almost entirely in urban areas and a few rural localities where most blacks worked outside plantations. The status quo ante of excluding African Americans from the political system lasted in
18375-441: The last African Americans were elected to Congress from the South before disenfranchisement of blacks by states throughout the region, as described below. From 1890 to 1908, southern states passed new constitutions and laws to disenfranchise African Americans and many Poor Whites by creating barriers to voter registration; voting rolls were dramatically reduced as blacks and poor whites were forced out of electoral politics. After
18550-441: The late 19th century, and had modern roots in the 1940s. After years of direct actions and grassroots protests, the movement made its largest legislative and judicial gains during the 1960s. The movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans. After the American Civil War and subsequent abolition of slavery in
18725-484: The law's the law, and you're under arrest." She later said, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind. ... " Parks was charged with a violation of Chapter 6, Section 11, segregation law of the Montgomery City code, although technically she had not taken a white-only seat; she had been in a colored section. Edgar Nixon , president of
18900-528: The leadership of Walter Reuther , the United Auto Workers donated $ 75,000 to help pay for the NAACP's efforts at the Supreme Court. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas , that mandating, or even permitting, public schools to be segregated by race was unconstitutional . Chief Justice Warren wrote in
19075-416: The legal case. Parks traveled and spoke about the issues. In 1957, Raymond and Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Hampton, Virginia ; mostly because she was unable to find work. She also disagreed with King and other leaders of Montgomery's struggling civil rights movement about how to proceed, and was constantly receiving death threats. In Hampton, she found a job as a hostess in an inn at Hampton Institute ,
19250-463: The local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ), helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott . Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in the first federal court case filed by civil rights attorney Fred Gray on February 1, 1956, as Browder v. Gayle , to challenge bus segregation in the city. In a United States district court, Colvin testified before
19425-560: The lynching of Emmett Till in 1955. These included economic boycotts such as the Montgomery bus boycott , " sit-ins " in Greensboro and Nashville , a series of protests during the Birmingham campaign , and a march from Selma to Montgomery . The movement was led by Martin Luther King Jr. , James Bevel , and others, and press coverage of police violence using fire hoses and dogs against students attempting to walk to City Hall to talk with
19600-858: The mayor during the Birmingham campaign increased its public support. Discrimination was often supported by courts, including by the Supreme Court in its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson , which upheld the doctrine of separate but equal . At the culmination of a legal strategy pursued by African Americans, in 1954 the Supreme Court struck down the underpinnings of laws that allowed racial discrimination as unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education . The Warren Court made further pro-civil rights rulings in cases such as Browder v. Gayle (1956) and Loving v. Virginia (1967), banning segregation in public schools and public transport, and striking down all state laws against interracial marriage . Following
19775-419: The method of nonviolence and why it is considered useful, and there is the tactical method, which ultimately teaches demonstrators "how to be a protestor—how to sit-in, how to picket, how to defend yourself against attack, giving training on how to remain cool when people are screaming racist insults into your face and pouring stuff on you and hitting you" (Civil Rights Movement Archive). The philosophical basis of
19950-401: The middle rows until the white section filled. If more whites needed seats, blacks were to move to seats in the rear, stand, or, if there was no room, leave the bus. Black people could not sit across the aisle in the same row as white people. The driver could move the "colored" section sign, or remove it altogether. If white people were already sitting in the front, black people had to board at
20125-466: The military pressed for full civil rights and often led activist movements. In 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981 , which ended segregation in the military . Housing segregation became a nationwide problem following the Great Migration of black people out of the South. Racial covenants were employed by many real estate developers to "protect" entire subdivisions , with
20300-514: The modern day civil rights movement." Rembert said, "I know people have heard her name before, but I just thought we should have a day to celebrate her." Colvin could not attend the proclamation due to health concerns. In 2019, 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 the four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle , including Colvin. In 2021, Colvin applied to
20475-456: The more oppressive it became. On the day of Parks's trial—December 5, 1955—the WPC distributed the 35,000 leaflets. The handbill read, We are ... asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial ... You can afford to stay out of school for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off
20650-546: The movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation , and organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr. At the time, Parks was employed as a seamstress at a local department store and was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She had recently attended the Highlander Folk School , a Tennessee center for training activists for workers' rights and racial equality. Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she
20825-467: The number of whites in the South. Characteristics of the post-Reconstruction period: African Americans and other ethnic minorities rejected this regime. They resisted it in numerous ways and sought better opportunities through lawsuits, new organizations, political redress, and labor organizing (see the Civil rights movement (1896–1954) ). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
21000-403: The one: white people aren't going to bother Rosa, they like her". Colvin did not receive the same attention as Parks for a number of reasons: she did not have "good hair", she was not fair-skinned, she was a teenager, and she was pregnant. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement tried to keep up appearances and make the "most appealing" protesters the most seen. When Colvin refused to get up, she
21175-464: The original casket to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American Culture and History, where it is now on display. In 2007, Bryant said that she had fabricated the most sensational part of her story in 1955. On December 1, 1955, nine months after a 15-year-old high school student, Claudette Colvin , refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and
21350-449: The overcrowded conditions and failing facility. Some local leaders of the NAACP had tried to persuade the students to back down from their protest against the Jim Crow laws of school segregation. When the students did not budge, the NAACP joined their battle against school segregation. The NAACP proceeded with five cases challenging the school systems; these were later combined under what is known today as Brown v. Board of Education . Under
21525-462: 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." On May 20, 2018, Congressman Joe Crowley honored Colvin for her lifetime commitment to public service with a Congressional Certificate and an American flag. Colvin has often said she is not angry that she did not get more recognition; rather, she
21700-399: The police officers sat in the back seat with her. This made her very scared that they would sexually assault her because this happened frequently. A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner. She was bailed out by her minister, who told her that she had brought the revolution to Montgomery. Through
21875-497: The practice of nonviolence in the American civil rights movement was largely inspired by Mahatma Gandhi 's "non-cooperation" policies during his involvement in the Indian independence movement , which were intended to gain attention so that the public would either "intervene in advance" or "provide public pressure in support of the action to be taken" (Erikson, 415). As Hartford explains it, philosophical nonviolence training aims to "shape
22050-412: The practice of requiring black riders to move when there were no white-only seats left. The first four rows of seats on each Montgomery bus were reserved for whites. Buses had "colored" sections for black people generally in the rear of the bus, although blacks composed more than 75% of the ridership. The sections were not fixed but were determined by placement of a movable sign. Black people could sit in
22225-402: The president of the NAACP, said, "My God, look what segregation has put in my hands!" Parks was considered the ideal plaintiff for a test case against city and state segregation laws, as she was seen as a responsible, mature woman with a good reputation. She was securely married and employed, was regarded as possessing a quiet and dignified demeanor, and was politically savvy. King said that Parks
22400-445: The pressure of the lawsuit with a school boycott in 1959. During the boycott, some of the first freedom schools of the period were established. The city responded to the campaign by permitting more open transfers to high-quality, historically white schools. (New York's African-American community, and Northern desegregation activists generally, now found themselves contending with the problem of white flight , however.) Emmett Till ,
22575-446: The primary intent to keep " white " neighborhoods "white". Ninety percent of the housing projects built in the years following World War II were racially restricted by such covenants. Cities known for their widespread use of racial covenants include Chicago , Baltimore , Detroit , Milwaukee , Los Angeles , Seattle , and St. Louis . Said premises shall not be rented, leased, or conveyed to, or occupied by, any person other than of
22750-482: The recent murders of the activists George W. Lee and Lamar Smith . The featured speaker was T. R. M. Howard , a black civil rights leader from Mississippi who headed the Regional Council of Negro Leadership . Howard brought news of the recent acquittal of the two men who had murdered Till. Parks was deeply saddened and angry at the news, particularly because Till's case had garnered much more attention than any of
22925-475: The remainder of the South, especially North Louisiana , Mississippi and Alabama, until national civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s to provide federal enforcement of constitutional voting rights. For more than sixty years, blacks in the South were essentially excluded from politics, unable to elect anyone to represent their interests in Congress or local government. Since they could not vote, they could not serve on local juries. During this period,
23100-618: The rental or sale of housing. African Americans re-entered politics in the South, and the Black Power movement emerged, which criticized leaders of the existing movement for their cooperative attitude and adherence to legalism and nonviolence . Black Power leaders, including within the Black Panther Party , demanded not only legal equality, but also economic self-sufficiency for the community. Support for Black Power came from African Americans who had seen little material improvement since
23275-457: The same row as us because that would mean we were as good as her". "The bus was getting crowded, and I remember the bus driver looking through the rearview mirror asking her [Colvin] to get up for the white woman, which she didn't," said Annie Larkins Price, a classmate of Colvin. "She had been yelling, 'It's my constitutional right !'. She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move." Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. I felt
23450-459: The same time as African Americans were being disenfranchised, white southerners imposed racial segregation by law. Violence against blacks increased, with numerous lynchings through the turn of the century. The system of de jure state-sanctioned racial discrimination and oppression that emerged from the post-Reconstruction South became known as the " Jim Crow " system. The United States Supreme Court made up almost entirely of Northerners, upheld
23625-631: The southern states in 1865, the three Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution had granted emancipation and constitutional rights of citizenship to all African Americans, the majority of whom had recently been enslaved. For a short period of time, African-American men voted and held political office, but as time went on Blacks in the South were increasingly deprived of civil rights, often under racist Jim Crow laws , and were subjected to discrimination and sustained violence by White supremacists . African Americans who moved to
23800-500: The state of Alabama to end bus segregation permanently. The Montgomery bus boycott was able to unify the people of Montgomery, regardless of educational background or class. Colvin gave birth to a son, Raymond, in March 1956. Colvin left Montgomery for New York City in 1958, because she had difficulty finding and keeping work following her participation in the federal court case that overturned bus segregation. Similarly, Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Detroit in 1957. Colvin stated she
23975-634: The states failed to implement the acts, the laws allowed the Federal Government to get involved. Many Republican governors were afraid of sending black militia troops to fight the Klan for fear of war. After the disputed election of 1876, which resulted in the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops, whites in the South regained political control of the region's state legislatures. They continued to intimidate and violently attack blacks before and during elections to suppress their voting, but
24150-455: The station made sexual comments about her body and took turns guessing her bra size throughout the ride. Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. Colvin was initially charged with disturbing the peace , violating the segregation laws , and battering and assaulting a police officer. "There was no assault", Price said. She also said in the 2009 book Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice , by Phillip Hoose , that one of
24325-425: The story is." In 2010, the street Colvin lived on when she was a young girl was named Claudette Colvin Drive in her honor. It is located off Upper Wetumpka Road in Montgomery, Alabama . Reverend Joseph Rembert has said, "If nobody did anything for Claudette Colvin in the past why don't we do something for her right now?" He contacted Montgomery Councilmen Tracy Larkin (whose sister was on the bus in 1955 when Colvin
24500-459: The third stop in front of the Empire Theater, and several white passengers boarded. Blake noted that two or three white passengers were standing, as the front of the bus had filled to capacity. The bus driver moved the "colored" section sign behind Parks and demanded that four black people give up their seats in the middle section so that the white passengers could sit. Years later, in recalling
24675-455: The three-judge panel that heard the case. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. The case went to the United States Supreme Court on appeal by the state, which upheld the district court's ruling on November 13, 1956. One month later, the Supreme Court affirmed the order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation. The Montgomery bus boycott
24850-432: The time period considered to be the "African-American civil rights" era, the predominant use of protest was nonviolent, or peaceful. Often referred to as pacifism, the method of nonviolence is considered to be an attempt to impact society positively. Although acts of racial discrimination have occurred historically throughout the United States, perhaps the most violent regions have been in the former Confederate states. During
25025-481: The trial Colvin was represented by Fred Gray , a lawyer for the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which was organizing civil rights actions. She was convicted on all three charges in juvenile court . When Colvin's case was appealed to the Montgomery Circuit Court on May 6, 1955, the charges of disturbing the peace and violating the segregation laws were dropped, although her conviction for assaulting
25200-536: The turn of the century, nor did a single nursery school exist – even as the Second Great Migration was causing overcrowding. Existing schools tended to be dilapidated and staffed with inexperienced teachers. Brown helped stimulate activism among New York City parents like Mae Mallory who, with the support of the NAACP, initiated a successful lawsuit against the city and state on Brown 's principles. Mallory and thousands of other parents bolstered
25375-414: The unanimous Supreme Court ruling, many states began to gradually integrate their schools, but some areas of the South resisted by closing public schools altogether. The integration of Southern public libraries followed demonstrations and protests that used techniques seen in other elements of the larger civil rights movement. This included sit-ins, beatings, and white resistance. For example, in 1963 in
25550-440: The white or Caucasian race. While many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward black people, many other whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions, a process known as white flight . From the 1930s to the 1960s, the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) issued guidelines that specified that a realtor "should never be instrumental in introducing to
25725-476: The white-dominated Democratic Party maintained political control of the South. With whites controlling all the seats representing the total population of the South, they had a powerful voting bloc in Congress. The Republican Party —the "party of Lincoln" and the party to which most blacks had belonged—shrank to insignificance except in remote Unionist areas of Appalachia and the Ozarks as black voter registration
25900-450: The white-established Jim Crow laws , passed after Democrats regained control of southern legislatures, racial segregation was imposed in public facilities and retail stores in the South , including public transportation. Bus and train companies enforced seating policies with separate sections for blacks and whites. School bus transportation was unavailable in any form for black schoolchildren in
26075-405: Was a more direct and potentially more rapid means of creating change than the traditional approach of mounting court challenges used by the NAACP and others. In 1952, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), led by T. R. M. Howard , a black surgeon, entrepreneur, and planter organized a successful boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. Through
26250-404: Was a way of life, a culture. However, not everyone agreed with this notion. James Forman, former SNCC (and later Black Panther) member, and nonviolence trainer was among those who did not. In his autobiography, The Making of Black Revolutionaries , Forman revealed his perspective on the method of nonviolence as "strictly a tactic, not a way of life without limitations." Similarly, Bob Moses , who
26425-401: Was also an active member of SNCC , felt that the method of nonviolence was practical. When interviewed by author Robert Penn Warren, Moses said "There's no question that he ( Martin Luther King Jr. ) had a great deal of influence with the masses. But I don't think it's in the direction of love. It's in a practical direction … ." (Who Speaks for the Negro? Warren). According to a 2020 study in
26600-541: Was announced. Civil rights movement 1954–1959 1960–1963 1964–1968 The civil rights movement was a social movement and campaign in the United States from 1954 to 1968 that aimed to abolish legalized racial segregation , discrimination , and disenfranchisement in the country, which was most commonly employed against African Americans . The movement had origins in the Reconstruction era during
26775-531: Was arrested) and Charles Jinright, and in 2017, the Council passed a resolution for a proclamation honoring Colvin. March 2 was named Claudette Colvin Day in Montgomery. Mayor Todd Strange presented the proclamation and, when speaking of Colvin, said, "She was an early foot soldier in our civil rights, and we did not want this opportunity to go by without declaring March 2 as Claudette Colvin Day to thank her for her leadership in
26950-543: Was arrested, Rosa Parks did the same thing. Parks soon became the symbol of the resulting Montgomery bus boycott and received national publicity. She was later hailed as the "mother of the civil rights movement". Parks was secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and had recently returned from a meeting at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee where nonviolence as a strategy was taught by Myles Horton and others. After Parks' arrest, African Americans gathered and organized
27125-542: Was branded a troublemaker by many in her community. She withdrew from college, and struggled in the local environment. In New York, Colvin and her son Raymond initially lived with her older sister, Velma Colvin. In 1960, she gave birth to her second son, Randy. Claudette began a job in 1969 as a nurse's aide in a nursing home in Manhattan . She worked there for 35 years, retiring in 2004. Raymond Colvin died in 1993 in New York of
27300-417: Was discovered and retrieved from the river. After Emmett's mother, Mamie Till , came to identify the remains of her son, she decided she wanted to "let the people see what I have seen". Till's mother then had his body taken back to Chicago where she had it displayed in an open casket during the funeral services where many thousands of visitors arrived to show their respects. A later publication of an image at
27475-491: Was elected President of this organization. The lengthy protest attracted national attention for him and the city. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South. The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine students who attended segregated black high schools in Little Rock , the capital of the state of Arkansas. They each volunteered when
27650-513: Was fired from her job and received death threats for years afterwards. Shortly after the boycott, she moved to Detroit , where she briefly found similar work. From 1965 to 1988, she served as secretary and receptionist to John Conyers , an African-American US Representative . She was also active in the black power movement and the support of political prisoners in the US. After retirement, Parks wrote her autobiography and continued to insist that there
27825-555: Was founded in 1909. It fought to end race discrimination through litigation , education, and lobbying efforts. Its crowning achievement was its legal victory in the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954), when the Warren Court ruled that segregation of public schools in the US was unconstitutional and, by implication, overturned the " separate but equal " doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896. Following
28000-571: Was going to stand up, and I said, 'No, I'm not.' And he said, 'Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested.' I said, 'You may do that. ' " During a 1956 radio interview with Sydney Rogers in West Oakland several months after her arrest, Parks said she had decided, "I would have to know for once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen." In her autobiography, My Story , she said: People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I
28175-399: Was just time ... there was opportunity for me to take a stand to express the way I felt about being treated in that manner. I had not planned to get arrested. I had plenty to do without having to end up in jail. But when I had to face that decision, I didn't hesitate to do so because I felt that we had endured that too long. The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment,
28350-510: Was mainly a family activity performed when there was no field work or chores to be done. She learned more sewing in school from the age of eleven; she sewed her own "first dress [she] could wear". As a student at the Industrial School for Girls in Montgomery from 1925 to 1928, she took academic and vocational courses. As the school closed in 1928, she transferred to Booker T. Washington Junior High School for her final year. Parks went on to
28525-488: Was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the U.S. as a result of white race riots against blacks that took place in more than three dozen cities. Urban problems such as crime and disease were blamed on the large influx of Southern blacks to cities in the north and west, based on stereotypes of rural southern African-Americans. Overall, blacks in Northern and Western cities experienced systemic discrimination in
28700-757: Was more work to be done in the struggle for justice. She received national recognition, including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal , the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the Congressional Gold Medal , and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall . Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda . California and Missouri commemorate Rosa Parks Day on her birthday, February 4, while Ohio , Oregon , and Texas commemorate
28875-548: Was often bedridden; the family could not afford to pay for an operation to address the condition. When her parents separated, she moved with her mother to her grandparents' farm outside Pine Level , where her younger brother Sylvester was born. Rosa joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), a century-old independent black denomination founded by free blacks in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , in
29050-506: Was ostracized by the white community. Repeatedly bullied by white children in her neighborhood, Parks often fought back physically. She later said: "As far back as I remember, I could never think in terms of accepting physical abuse without some form of retaliation if possible." By January 1, 1946, Parks was a member of the Order of the Eastern Star . In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks ,
29225-497: Was played by Mariah Iman Wilson. In the second season (2013) of the HBO drama series The Newsroom , the lead character, Will McAvoy (played by Jeff Daniels ), uses Colvin's refusal to comply with segregation as an example of how "one thing" can change everything. He remarks that if the ACLU had used her act of civil disobedience, rather than that of Rosa Parks' eight months later, to highlight
29400-433: Was regarded as "one of the finest citizens of Montgomery—not one of the finest Negro citizens, but one of the finest citizens of Montgomery". Parks's court case was being slowed down in appeals through the Alabama courts on their way to a Federal appeal and the process could have taken years. Holding together a boycott for that length of time would have been a great strain. In the end, black residents of Montgomery continued
29575-410: Was suppressed. The Republican lily-white movement also gained strength by excluding blacks. Until 1965, the " Solid South " was a one-party system under the white Democrats. Excepting the previously noted historic Unionist strongholds the Democratic Party nomination was tantamount to election for state and local office. In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington , president of
29750-412: Was then called off after a few months. The court subsequently declared all segregation on public transportation unconstitutional. For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. She has said, "Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn't the case at all." Colvin's case was dropped by civil rights campaigners because she
29925-424: Was thinking about a school paper she had written that day about the local customs that prohibited blacks from using the dressing rooms in order to try on clothes in department stores. In a later interview, she said: "We couldn't try on clothes. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot ... and take it to the store". Referring to the segregation on the bus and the white woman: "She couldn't sit in
30100-473: Was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in. When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her. As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, "Why do you push us around?" She remembered him saying, "I don't know, but
30275-490: Was to preserve the peace, deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the black students from entering the school. Faubus defied federal court orders, whereupon President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened. He federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent them home. Then he sent in an elite Army unit to escort the students to school and protect them between classes during the 1957–58 school year. In class, however,
30450-613: Was unconstitutional. The federal government filed a friend of the court brief in the case urging the justices to consider the effect that segregation had on America's image in the Cold War . Secretary of State Dean Acheson was quoted in the brief stating that "The United States is under constant attack in the foreign press, over the foreign radio, and in such international bodies as the United Nations because of various practices of discrimination in this country." The following year, in
30625-409: Was unmarried and pregnant during the proceedings. It is now widely accepted that she was not accredited by civil rights campaigners due to her circumstances. Rosa Parks said: "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance." The record of Colvin's arrest and adjudication of delinquency was expunged by
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