Editing Claudette Colvin (section)

== Bus incident ==
In 1955, Colvin was a student at the segregated Booker T. Washington High School in the city. She relied on the city's buses to get to and from school because her family did not own a car. The majority of customers on the bus system were African American, but they were discriminated against by its custom of segregated seating. Colvin was a member of the [[NAACP]] Youth Council and had been learning about the civil rights movement in school.<ref name="Adler"/> On March 2, 1955, she was returning home from school when she boarded a Highland Gardens bus and sat down near an emergency exit in a middle row.{{sfn|Hoose|2009|p=29}}

If the bus became so crowded that all the "white seats" in the front of the bus were filled until white people were standing, any African Americans were supposed to get up from nearby seats to make room for whites, move further to the back, and stand in the aisle if there were no free seats in that section. When a white woman who got on the bus was left standing in the front, the bus driver, Robert W. Cleere, commanded Colvin and three other black women in her row to move to the back. The other three moved, but another black woman, Ruth Hamilton, who was pregnant, got on the bus and sat next to Colvin.

The driver looked at the woman in his mirror. "He asked us both to get up. [Mrs. Hamilton] said she was not going to get up and that she had paid her fare and that she didn't feel like standing," recalls Colvin. "So I told him I was not going to get up either. So he said, 'If you are not going to get up, I will get a policeman.{{'"}} The police arrived and convinced a black man sitting behind the two women to move so that Mrs. Hamilton could move back, but Colvin still refused to move. She was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested by the two policemen, Thomas J. Ward and Paul Headley.<ref>{{cite book|last2=Greenhaw|first2=Wayne | first1= Donnie | last1= Williams |title= Thunder of Angels: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the People Who Broke the Back of Jim Crow| year= 2007| page= 49| publisher= Chicago Review Press |location= Chicago |isbn= 9781556526763 | url= https://books.google.com/books?id=jkVAYPFSpLAC&q=colvin| via= Google Books}}</ref><ref name= "newsweek1">{{cite news |first= Eliza |last= Gray |title= A Forgotten Contribution: Before Rosa Parks, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on the bus |url= http://www.newsweek.com/id/187325/?gt1=43002 |work= [[Newsweek]] |date= March 2, 2009 |access-date= November 26, 2009 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090401075059/http://www.newsweek.com/id/187325/?gt1=43002 |archive-date= April 1, 2009 }}</ref><ref name= "Guardian1">{{cite news |url= https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/dec/16/weekend7.weekend12| first= Gary |last= Younge |title= She would not be moved|newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date= December 16, 2000 |location= London}}</ref> This event took place nine months before the NAACP secretary [[Rosa Parks]] was arrested for the same offense.<ref name= "Barnes">{{cite news | first= Brooks |last= Barnes |title=From Footnote to Fame in Civil Rights History |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/books/26colvin.html?_r=1&hp |work=The New York Times |date=November 25, 2009 |access-date=October 27, 2017 |language= en-US |issn= 0362-4331}}</ref> Colvin later said: "My mother told me to be quiet about what I did. She told me: 'Let Rosa be the one. White people aren't going to bother Rosa[,] her skin is lighter than yours and they like her.{{'"}}<ref name="Barnes"/> Colvin did not receive the same attention as Parks for a number of reasons: she did not have "good hair", she was not fair-skinned, she was a teenager, and she was pregnant. The leaders in the Civil Rights Movement tried to keep up appearances and make the "most appealing" protesters the most seen.<ref name="Adler" /><ref>{{cite book| chapter= Intersectionalities and Multiplicities: Race and Materiality in Literature for the Young| title= Twenty-First-Century Feminisms in Children's and Adolescent Literature| first= Roberta| last= Seelinger Trites| publisher= University Press of Mississippi| place= Jackson, Mississippi| year= 2018| pages= 31–58| jstor= j.ctv5jxnst.6| doi= 10.2307/j.ctv5jxnst| isbn= 978-1-4968-1384-8}}</ref>

When Colvin refused to get up, she was thinking about a school paper she had written that day, about the local customs that prohibited Blacks from using the dressing rooms in order to try on clothes in department stores.<ref name="colvin">{{Cite book |title= Rosa Parks| first= Douglas |last= Brinkley |publisher= Viking |year= 2000 |isbn= 978-0-670-89160-3 |url-access= registration |url= https://archive.org/details/rosaparks00brin}}</ref> In a later interview, she said: "We couldn't try on clothes. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot ... and take it to the store".<ref name="Adler" /> Referring to the segregation on the bus and the white woman, Colvin recalled: "If she sat down in the same row as me, it meant I was as good as her."<ref name= "Barnes" />

"The bus was getting crowded, and I remember the bus driver looking through the rearview mirror asking her [Colvin] to get up for the white woman, which she didn't," said Annie Larkins Price, a classmate of Colvin. "She had been yelling, 'It's my [[constitutional right]]!'. She decided on that day that she wasn't going to move."<ref name="Huntsville">{{cite news| first= Amanda |last= Dawkins |title= 'Unsung hero' of boycott paved way for Parks |work= [[The Huntsville Times]]|<!--WIRE STATE;-->page=6B|date=February 7, 2005}}</ref> Colvin recalled, "History kept me stuck to my seat. I felt the hand of [[Harriet Tubman]] pushing down on one shoulder and [[Sojourner Truth]] pushing down on the other."<ref name= Colvin>{{Cite news| first= Phillip| last= Hoose |title= Claudette Colvin: First to keep her seat |work= [[Philadelphia Tribune]]| url= https://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-there-was-claudette-colvin}}</ref> Colvin was handcuffed, arrested, and forcibly removed from the bus. She shouted that her constitutional rights were being violated.<ref name="Barnes" /><ref name= "newsweek1"/> Colvin said, "But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn't make and probably couldn't have made. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one."{{sfn|Hoose|2009|p=104}}

The police officers who took her to the station made sexual comments about her body and took turns guessing her bra size throughout the ride.<ref name= "power dynamics" /> After one officer jumped in the back seat of the police car, Colvin recalled, "I put my knees together and crossed my hands over my lap and started praying."{{sfn|Hoose|2009|p=32}} This made her very scared that they would sexually assault her because this happened frequently. Price testified for Colvin, who was tried in juvenile court. Colvin was initially charged with [[Breach of the peace|disturbing the peace]], violating the [[segregation laws]], and [[battery (crime)|battering]] and [[assaulting]] a police officer. "There was no assault", Price said.<ref name= "Huntsville"/>

A group of black civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr. was organized to discuss Colvin's arrest with the police commissioner.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Claudette Colvin {{!}} Americans Who Tell The Truth|url=https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/claudette-colvin|access-date=2021-03-02|website=americanswhotellthetruth.org}}</ref> She was bailed out by her minister, who told her that she had brought the revolution to Montgomery.<ref name="Adler" />

Through the trial Colvin was represented by [[Fred Gray (attorney)|Fred Gray]], a lawyer for the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which was organizing civil rights actions.<ref name=":0">{{cite web|url=http://www.blackpast.org/aah/colvin-claudette-1935|title=Colvin, Claudette| work= The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed|date=March 14, 2014| via= blackpast.org|language=en|access-date=April 13, 2018}}</ref> She was convicted on all three charges in [[juvenile court]]. When Colvin's case was appealed to the Montgomery Circuit Court on May 6, 1955, the charges of disturbing the peace and violating the segregation laws were dropped, although her conviction for assaulting a police officer was upheld.<ref name=":0" />

Colvin's moment of activism was not solitary or random. In high school, she had high ambitions of political activity. She dreamed of becoming the [[President of the United States]]. Her political inclination was fueled in part by an incident with her schoolmate, [[Jeremiah Reeves]]; his case was the first time that she had witnessed the work of the NAACP.<ref>{{cite news| last= Laughland| first= Oliver| title= Claudette Colvin: the woman who refused to give up her bus seat – nine months before Rosa Parks | url= https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/25/claudette-colvin-the-woman-who-refused-to-give-up-her-bus-seat-nine-months-before-rosa-parks | date= February 25, 2021| newspaper= The Guardian| access-date= February 25, 2021 }}</ref> Reeves was found having sexual intercourse with a white woman who claimed she was raped, though Reeves claims their relations were consensual. He was executed for his alleged crimes.<ref>{{Cite journal| last= Cotton |first= Nzinga| date=June 30, 2008| title= Claudette Colvin | journal= [[New Nation]]| pages= 21 |id= {{ProQuest|390122752}}}}</ref>