More proof the black civil rights movement was not spontaneous but planned
On that supercharged day in 1955, when Rosa Parksrefused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery,Ala., she rode her way into history books, credited with helping toignite the civil rights movement.
But there was another woman, named Claudette Colvin, who refused tobe treated like a substandard citizen on one of those Montgomery buses— and she did it nine months before Mrs. Parks. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.made his political debut fighting her arrest. Moreover, she was thestar witness in the legal case that eventually forced bus desegregation.
Yetinstead of being celebrated, Ms. Colvin has lived unheralded in theBronx for decades, initially cast off by black leaders who feared shewas not the right face for their battle, according to a new book thathas plucked her from obscurity.
Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. Parks made herson Dec. 1 that same year. Somehow, as Mrs. Parks became one of TimeMagazine’s 100 most important people of the 20th century, and streetsand schools were named after her, Ms. Colvin managed to let go of anybitterness. After Ms. Colvin was arrested, Mrs. Parks, a seasoned N.A.A.C.P.official, sometimes let her spend the night at her apartment. Ms.Colvin remembers her as a reserved but kindly woman who fixed hersnacks of peanut butter on Ritz crackers.
“My mother told me tobe quiet about what I did,” Ms. Colvin recalled. “She told me: ‘LetRosa be the one. White people aren’t going to bother Rosa — her skin islighter than yours and they like her.’ ”