Unsung Heroes: Claudette Colvin

A Black History Month Series

Welcome to part three of our blog series “Unsung Heroes,” lifting up Black leaders around the world for Black History Month. Because of my extensive travel experience and the ways those travels influenced my life, worldview, and career, I find it important to not only lift up Black American voices during this month, but Black voices from around the world. This is consistent with my perspective that we are celebrating Black History Month and not just African American history month. Stick with us this month to learn about some relatively unknown, uncelebrated Black heroes.

Rosa Parks before Rosa Parks

American students learn about Rosa Parks from a young age, being taught that she was significant to the civil rights movement because of her unwillingness to give up her seat on a bus for a white man. But many are never taught — in fact, many American adults never learn — that there were other African Americans who took that stand before Rosa did. One notable unsung one is Claudette Colvin.

Who Was Claudette Colvin?

In 1955, Claudette Colvin was a 16 year old high school student and a member of the NAACP Youth Council when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white woman in Montgomery, Alabama. Inspired by a school paper she had written that day about the segregationist practices in clothing stores, Colvin decided to stay seated when asked to vacate her seat for a White woman.

History Kept Me Stuck To My Seat

“History kept me stuck to my seat,” Colvin later said, “I felt the hand of Harriet Tubman pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth pushing down on the other.” She was arrested and convicted for this infraction of Jim Crow laws, although she later became a plaintiff in Browder vs. Gayle, which ultimately led to desegregation of Montgomery buses. Nine months after Colvin’s arrest, Rosa Parks staged her famous refusal to give up her seat and the yearlong Montgomery bus boycott began with Parks at the forefront.

Unsung

Why have we never heard Claudette Colvin’s story? The answer is not that it was accidentally overlooked or forgotten; instead, the leaders of the civil rights movement intentionally chose to highlight Rosa Parks’ protest and arrest instead of Colvin’s. Colvin, they thought, would not be a good face for the movement as she lacked some of the characteristics that made Rosa Parks more “acceptable” to the White press.

Colvin had darker skin and became an unwed teenage mother, while Parks was grown up, employed, and appeared to be middle class. For this reason, while recognition has increased in the last few years, Colvin was not the face of the movement she helped spark and she has been left out of much of the history since.

Colvin, now 81, has reacted with understanding but disappointment when asked about her lack of recognition. The lifting up of Rosa Parks — while Claudette Colvin, a courageous, pioneering teenager, was ostracized — highlights some tensions within the Black community as a result of being embedded in a White supremacist culture.

Ask Yourself

Ask yourself — how many other Claudette Colvins have there been throughout history that we know nothing of? How many might there be today who do not have a true sense of Black history that culturally awakens their spirit and culturally grounds their purpose in action? How many young African Americans today are undereducated, miseducated, marginalized, made powerless, voiceless, or too consumed by poverty to be able to discover that inner sense of agency? Ask yourself, what would it take for you to access your inner Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks in these times we are living in today?

Stay tuned to learn about some more Unsung Heroes of Black History Month!