Never let it be said this cracker ignored Black History Month
Rosa Parks was not the first African-American to refuse to give up her bus seat for whitey. I had no idea, either, until one of my students came upon the following passage in the biography of Rosa Parks she'd picked to read from:
Several months earlier, another black woman, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, had also been arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger. Claudette had been seated in the filled black section of the bus, but when the seats in the front were occupied, the driver asked the first row of blacks to give up their seats and stand. Claudette stayed where she was, and no white took the vacant seat next to her. The bus driver grew so angry he drove into town without stopping and called for a street policeman to arrest Claudette. When she refused to get up, two policemen dragged her, kicking and screaming hysterically, off the bus, and she as later tried and convicted for violating state segregation statutes, as well as for resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and assault and battery. Many people regarded the convictions as an injustice, but because Claudette was pregnant and unmarried at the time, she was not regarded as an especially sympathetic public figure, and some blacks feared that she would reflect unfavorably on the black community.
But there was nothing that could be said to impugn the morality and respectability of Rosa Parks, and it was immediately recognized that she was an ideal figure behind whom to mount a nonviolent challenge to the centuries-old system of legal racial oppression in the south.
Another interesting wrinkle: according to this page, Rosa Parks' family helped raise Claudette's bail and get her a lawyer, so there's no saying Parks had no idea there was precedent here. Could the black community that made Rosa Parks an example even have put her up to it? Did I mention that Parks was the secretary of the local NAACP?
This page says Claudette Colvin was also not as good a rallying point because she was dark-skinned. My student's first comment upon seeing a photo of Rosa Parks was, "Dang, she light!" (Hey, I'm just there to help them read -- I don't have the time or energy to make the spoken grammar my problem, too.) Yet another source says the middle-class black leadership at the time was uncomfortable with how poor Claudette Colvin was and that another test case -- one Mary Louise Smith -- was rejected due to her father's alcoholism.
Slate also states that as of 2002, Colvin worked as a nurse's aide in the Bronx and Mary Louise Smith still lived in Montgomery, "in virtual anonymity." Rosa Parks has streets, parks, and schools named after her, and enjoys frivolous lawsuits. Seems kind of unfair to me. But I've never been told what part of the bus to sit in, so what do I know?
Rosa Parks was not the first African-American to refuse to give up her bus seat for whitey. I had no idea, either, until one of my students came upon the following passage in the biography of Rosa Parks she'd picked to read from:
Several months earlier, another black woman, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, had also been arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger. Claudette had been seated in the filled black section of the bus, but when the seats in the front were occupied, the driver asked the first row of blacks to give up their seats and stand. Claudette stayed where she was, and no white took the vacant seat next to her. The bus driver grew so angry he drove into town without stopping and called for a street policeman to arrest Claudette. When she refused to get up, two policemen dragged her, kicking and screaming hysterically, off the bus, and she as later tried and convicted for violating state segregation statutes, as well as for resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and assault and battery. Many people regarded the convictions as an injustice, but because Claudette was pregnant and unmarried at the time, she was not regarded as an especially sympathetic public figure, and some blacks feared that she would reflect unfavorably on the black community.
But there was nothing that could be said to impugn the morality and respectability of Rosa Parks, and it was immediately recognized that she was an ideal figure behind whom to mount a nonviolent challenge to the centuries-old system of legal racial oppression in the south.
Another interesting wrinkle: according to this page, Rosa Parks' family helped raise Claudette's bail and get her a lawyer, so there's no saying Parks had no idea there was precedent here. Could the black community that made Rosa Parks an example even have put her up to it? Did I mention that Parks was the secretary of the local NAACP?
This page says Claudette Colvin was also not as good a rallying point because she was dark-skinned. My student's first comment upon seeing a photo of Rosa Parks was, "Dang, she light!" (Hey, I'm just there to help them read -- I don't have the time or energy to make the spoken grammar my problem, too.) Yet another source says the middle-class black leadership at the time was uncomfortable with how poor Claudette Colvin was and that another test case -- one Mary Louise Smith -- was rejected due to her father's alcoholism.
Slate also states that as of 2002, Colvin worked as a nurse's aide in the Bronx and Mary Louise Smith still lived in Montgomery, "in virtual anonymity." Rosa Parks has streets, parks, and schools named after her, and enjoys frivolous lawsuits. Seems kind of unfair to me. But I've never been told what part of the bus to sit in, so what do I know?
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