Guest Author: Shelton Registe, high school rising senior
Everyone knows of the well-known icon of the Civil Rights Movement, Rosa Parks, and how she contributed to starting the movement by refusing to give her seat to a white man. What if I told you, a 15 year old did the same thing nine months before her and barely anyone knows the story. This is the story of Claudette Colvin.
On March 2, 1955, Claudette was riding the bus home from school, and a white man asked for the seat. Normally, she would've given him the seat but something came over her, she says in an interview for NPR. "My head was just too full of black history, you know, the oppression that we went through. It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn't get up," So the driver called the police and they handcuffed her and drove her to the police station then to jail, not giving her a chance to call anyone or to explain herself in the station. Claudette's friends ran to her mother and explained what happened and her mother and the pastor Reverend Johnson drove up to the jailhouse and bailed Claudette out. That night her father stayed up with a shotgun in case some angry white people came to lynch her.
December 1, 1955, a couple months after Claudette Colvin got arrested on that bus, Rosa Parks boarded the same one and also refused to give her seat to a white man. This is the famous act that started the Montgomery Bus Boycott and ignited the Civil Rights Movement. This is also the act that put Rosa Parks in history books and won her numerous awards. She is known as the mothere of the freedom movement.
So many ask since Claudette Colvin did the same thing a couple months before Rosa Pards, why was Parks receiving all the credit? The NAACP wanted the right figure to represent the movement when it started. They believed it would appeal to the sympathetic white folks. Also Claudette was pregnant a couple months after the incident to a much older married man which would be a bad look. Parks was also middle class, the secretary of the NAACP and 42 years old, much older and experienced than a 15 year old. Some may argue to have used Colvin as the icon, since she was the first to defy that law in such a way and since she was 15 to show the injustice to younger kids and women. Rosa Parks, however, was the best candidate to start the revolution. To conclude, we may not have been where we are without Claudette Colvin's bravery.
My very good friend Savannah believes that it was smart to use Rosa Parks for publicity seeing as people probably wouldn't have paid attention if Claudette was the face of this problem. Savannah believes in giving credit when it's due. She says Rosa shouldn't have even felt comfortable taking so much credit in something she only partook in starting. In her opinion, taking all the glory from Claudette was messed up. Claudette definitely didn't take it that way because in the end she is getting justice for her people, like she knows the part she played, but to Savannah, it just won't sit right that Claudette was okay with this. But she understands why she just sat back because Claudette probably knew this sad truth as well. In conclusion, Savannah says she's proud of Claudette because even though it took until now for her to truly be recognized, she can still go home and say to herself, "I started this, I was a part of the small steps in this big problem."
I, personally, would use Rosa Parks as the icon for the movement. You have one chance to get this revolution right and a kid who had a pregnancy at such a young age from a much older married man might shift how people perceive the movement and what morals it stands for.
Also although the skin color of the icon might be wrong, it is a strategic way to sway the opinion of white folks so they can see a colored person that almost looks like them. Rosa is the middle of the black and white people. She is light skinned and middle class, so the perfect tie in both worlds.
