How Did Claudette Colvin Affect The Civil Rights Movement

Rosa Parks - Rosa Parks is considered the mother of Civil Rights Movement. She had been a member of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) before she became a huge issue throughout the nation in the 1950s. On Dec. 1, 1955, she refused to give up her seat to a white man who asked her to get up for him. Parks was tired that day and did not feel like giving up her seat. She was arrested for disobeying orders to go to the back of the bus. This caused the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After a year, the Supreme Court supported the court order to integrate the buses in Montgomery. This also sparked the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, one of the leaders of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] refused to give up her seat to a white person on a segregated city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, despite being reprimanded by the driver (Schulke 166). Montgomery, Alabama was known for its terrible treatment of blacks. The buses in particular had been a source of tension between the city and black citizens for many years (Schulke, 167). As a result of refusing to give up her seat, Rosa Parks was arrested. Rosa Parks' popularity among the black community, proved to be the spark that ignited the non-violent Civil Rights Movement (Norrell 2).

When many people think of the Civil Rights Movement and its leaders, the first names that comes to mind are Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. However, there were so many people that were just as influential and deserving of recognition as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. One of these people, Claudette Colvin, was “Rosa Parks before Rosa Parks”. Claudette Colvin grew up in King Hill, Alabama- a close-knit community that was stuck between two white neighborhoods. She attended a one-room school, with one teacher teaching all six elementary grades. When she refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a Montgomery bus, she was only fifteen years old. Claudette was arrested, and seen as an outsider by her classmates. She suffered

On Thursday evening December 1, 1955, Rosa boards a Montgomery City Bus to go home after a long day working as a seamstress. She walks back to the section for blacks, and takes a seat. The law stated that they could sit there if no White people were standing. Rosa parks never liked segregation rules and has been fighting against them for more than ten years in the NAACP, but until then had never broke any of the unjust rules. As the bus stops at more places, more white people enter the bus, all the seats in the “White Only” section was filled and the bus driver orders Rosa’s row to move to the back of the bus, they all moved, accept Rosa. She was arrested and fined for violating a city regulation. This act of defiance began a movement that ended legal Segregation in America, and made her an inspiration to freedom devoted people everywhere.

Claudette Colvin was born on September 5th 1939, in Montgomery Alabama. “Claudette Colvin was an A student at all-black Booker T. Washington High” (15 Freedman). She was a 15 year old spunky girl who was upset about segregation. She did what Rosa Parks did, but nine months earlier, and it did not spark as much controversy. Claudette Colvin felt like she sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott by refusing to get out of her seat.

Rosa Parks is invariably portrayed as someone who had rached the end of her patience after a hard day’s work and refused to leave her seat on the bus, preferring to rest her feet. Rosa Parks had been a life-long worker for the NAACP and she had taken a special interest in the Claudette Colvin case. At the time of her arrest, Parks had just finished a course on race relations in Monteagle, Tennessee. She became a seamstress simply because that was all she could find to do in the segregated society of Montgomery. However, Parks had been educated at the all-black Alabama State College. When Parks was arrested, the NAACP asked the police why they had done this. E. D. Nixon of the NAACP was told that “It was none of your dang business”. After finding out the reason for her arrest, Nixon posted the bond required for her

Rosa Parks, a very important and influential black woman in history. When a student is learning about Blacks fighting for equal rights, it is almost certain that the name “Rosa Parks” will be mentioned. The story that students are taught is that she was a quiet woman who had had enough and refused to give up her seat on the bus, which is not entirely true. Yes, Ms. Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man because she was sick and tired of being treated in such a horrible way, but she was not as quiet as everyone was taught to believe. Some might even say that history got the great Rosa Parks story wrong. An author by the name of Jeanne Theoharis definitely agrees to that. She agrees strongly that she wrote an article titled “How History Got the Rosa Parks Story Wrong”.

She showed them that they could be equal. The only difference was the color of the skin. She taught them that that wasn’t even a big difference. She fought segregation her entire life.

Rosa Parks is one of the famous activists of civil disobedience; she has experienced the foulness of segregation all her life. She was born Rosa McCauley on February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. She received a poor education from a poor segregated school house, and dropped out of Alabama State Teachers College for Negroes to care for her sick grandma. She married Raymond Parks, a barber and an activist of NAACP at age 19 (Rosa).

The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement Rosa Parks is one of the most famous people in the history of the American Civil Rights movement, for her refusal to “move to the back of the bus” on December 1, 1955. Although her moment of protest was not a planned event , it certainly proved to be a momentous one. The nature of Rosa Park’s protest, the response of the authorities of Montgomery, the tactics adopted by the civil rights leaders in Montgomery, and the role eventually played by Federal authority, were all aspects of this particular situation that were to be repeated again and again in the struggle for equality of race. Rosa Parks’ action, and the complex combination of events that followed, in some measure, foreshadowed a great deal of

Colvin knew of the humiliation and violence that black people could face if they dared to challenge segregation. In fact, one of her friends had been killed for allegedly flirting with a white girl. However, she'd had enough. Ever since she was young, she'd wanted to become a lawyer and fight for civil rights. That day in 1955, Colvin took her chance. This choice had many consequences. While there were those in her community who were proud of Colvin's actions, a majority labeled her a troublemaker. This was a time when many did not want to fight injustice, focusing instead on issues such as black enterprise. Colvin not only lost many friends, but later had to drop out of college and faced difficulty in finding work. However even with threats against her and her family, Colvin decided that she was going to fight for her rights. Although there had been other African-Americans who had done the same thing as her, she was the first to decide to go to court. In the case Browder v. Gayle, the court ruled that the segregation on buses in Montgomery violated the Fourteenth Amendment. This was a huge victory for the Civil Rights

In 1955, a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man, and changed the history of the black struggle of civil rights. Several have heard a simple version of Rosa Parks story, which she was tired from a long day of work resulted in bus desegregation. In actuality, steps to organize against bus segregation had begun years before, and the boycott was coordinated effort that involved approximately 40,00 people and over a year sacrifice. There had been several instances of Blacks refusing to obey the segregation laws on public transportation in the 1940’s. Rosa Parks, when she refused to give up her seat on a city bus, committed the most powerful act of civil disobedience in the American Civil Rights Movement.

When a white woman asked her to move to the back so she could sit, she refused.(Ellen Levine) She ended up getting arrested and abused by police officers. According to Ellen Levine, author of "On the Front Lines of Justice", a police officer yanked Colvin out of her seat and another officer kicked her. At the time, she was only 15. That’s a young age to get thrown in jail. Claudette had said that she had the spirit of Harriett Tubman and the thought of her courage to help free African Americans from slavery. (Maryam Abdulaleem) This was just the start of the movement towards equal

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks made history in her hometown of Montgomery, Alabama (Baggett, 2016). Alabama, amongst many other southern states, enforced segregation in public places. Rosa Parks boarded a bus after a long day of work at the local department store and paid the white bus driver her regular fare. The bus was full, as it normally was at this time of day, and Rosa took her seat at the front of the black section of the bus (Sanders, 2006, p. 3). Black passengers were advised to yield to white passengers if the front half of the white section was full. The bus driver began to drive and eventually made another stop at the next station. White passengers began to board the bus and took all the remaining white seats at the front of the bus; however, there was one man left standing. The bus driver asked Rosa and the other passengers beside her to vacate

Rosa Parks is remembered by her valiant attempt to deny moving to the back of the bus. Even though she denied to relocate on the Montgomery bus, she was still forced to take a seat in