The Kid Who Refused To Stand Up (The True Story of Claudette Colvin)

When Claudette Colvin was fifteen years old, she boarded a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on her way home from school. When she was told to give up her seat to a white passenger, Claudette refused. She was arrested and taken to jail all for standing up against a law she knew was wrong. It happened nine months before Rosa Parks made her famous stand on another Montgomery bus. Claudette would go on to help challenge segregation in court and change the law for good. This is the true story of Claudette Colvin.

SOURCE LIST:

1. Phillip Hoose / NPR, March 2009. Source for Claudette’s childhood and education in segregated Montgomery; the March 2, 1955 bus ride; her refusal to give up her seat; her arrest and treatment by police; time in the city jail; her family’s fear of retaliation; and Reverend H. H. Johnson’s response after her release. Excerpted from Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, based extensively on Hoose’s interviews with Colvin.
2. National Women’s History Museum, February 2017. Source for Claudette growing up under Jim Crow; learning Black history in school; her admiration for Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth; the events surrounding her arrest at age fifteen; the charges against her; reaction from classmates and the community; and the historical context surrounding why Rosa Parks later became the better-known figure in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
3. National Archives / DocsTeach, Fingerprint Card of Claudette Colvin. Primary-source documentation of Claudette’s March 2, 1955 arrest, as well as background on her later role as one of the four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle and the federal court challenge to segregation on Montgomery buses.
4. National Archives / DocsTeach, Judgment from Browder v. Gayle. Source for Claudette joining Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith, and Susie McDonald in the federal lawsuit challenging Montgomery’s segregated bus system; the District Court ruling in their favor; and the legal battle that ultimately ended enforced segregation on Montgomery buses.
5. **Supreme Court Historical Society, Browder v. Gayle (1956). ** Source for the Jim Crow laws governing Montgomery’s buses, the broader campaign against discriminatory treatment of Black passengers, Claudette’s arrest, and the constitutional challenge that resulted in the desegregation of Montgomery’s bus system.
6. Smithsonian Magazine. Source for Claudette’s place in the larger Civil Rights Movement; her refusal to surrender her seat nine months before Rosa Parks; her participation in Browder v. Gayle; and the reasons her story remained relatively unknown for decades before receiving greater recognition.