Claudette Colvin

Activist

1939-09-05

Claudette Colvin is an American civil rights activist known for refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Her act of resistance occurred months before Rosa Parks' widely known protest. She was also a plaintiff in the Browder v. Gayle case challenging bus segregation.

Quotes by Claudette Colvin

Back then, as a teenager, I kept thinking, why don't the adults around here just say something? Say it so they know we don't accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there's no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'
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The Montgomery Bus Boycott began in December 1955, and by 1956 NAACP leaders came to me and asked me to be part of a lawsuit they wanted to file on my behalf and that of three other women, to challenge segregation on public buses.
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A lot of African American women wanted to emulate white women. But I said in my mind, rationally thinking, there is no way you are going to get your hair that straight, especially in the summer.
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As long as white people put people of color, African Americans and Latinos, in the same dispensable bag, and look at our children of color as insignificant and treat women of color as not as deserving of protection as white women, we will never achieve true equality.
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I was about four years old the first time I ever saw what happened when you acted up to whites.
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I always tell young people to hold on to their dreams. And sometimes you have to stand up for what you think is right even if you have to stand alone.
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