Claudette Colvin
Page 12
44 “She insisted she was colored”: Halberstam, The Fifties, 546.
45 “Claudette’s agonized sobs”: Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 42.
6. “CRAZY” TIMES
47 “The verdict was a bombshell”: Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 42.
47 “The question of boycotting”: Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 39.
48 Gossip about Claudette: Younge, “She Would Not Be Moved”; Willing, “Then Teens”; Branch, Parting the Waters, 123.
48 “I had to be sure”: Williams, Eyes on the Prize, 63.
49 Church fund-raising for Claudette’s lawsuit: King Papers, Stanford University. NAACP Notes: 550322-000.pdf.
49 “I just can’t explain”: King Papers, Stanford University, Letter from Virginia Durr to Curtis McDougall, in Vol. 6/550411-000.
49 May 6, 1955, appeal: Garrow, “Origins,” 24; Branch, Parting the Waters, 123; Gray, Bus Ride to Justice, 49.
51 “From the time Claudette got arrested”: Author interview with Alean Bowser, by telephone, March 27, 2007.
53 Mary Louise Smith’s arrest: Willing, “Then Teens.”
54 Gossip about Mary Louise Smith’s family: Willing, “Then Teens”; Branch, Parting the Waters, 127.
55 “The inaction of the city”: King, Stride Toward Freedom, 42.
7. “ANOTHER NEGRO WOMAN HAS BEEN ARRESTED”
57 “Another Negro woman has”: Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 45.
62 MLK’s Boyhood Bus Experience (sidebar): Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 35.
62 “Just last Thursday”: Branch, Parting the Waters, 139.
62 “And we are determined”: Branch, Parting the Waters, 141.
8. SECOND FRONT, SECOND CHANCE
65 “He had poetry in his voice”: Williams and Greenhaw, Thunder of Angels, 85.
66 MIA network: Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 27.
66 “Well, if you think” (sidebar): Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 22.
66 “I’d go home” (sidebar): Author interview with Annie Larkin Price, by telephone, February 19, 2007.
67 “Jump in, grandmother”: King, Stride Toward Freedom, 78.
67 “When they first sent the leaflets”: Author interview with Alean Bowser, by telephone, March 27, 2007.
69 Juliette Morgan story (sidebar): Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 102–3.
71 “If I am stopped”: King, Stride Toward Freedom, 138.
71 In 1900 . . . forty years later (sidebar): Newman and Sawyer, Everybody Say Freedom, 252.
71 Fred Gray’s strategy: Gray, Bus Ride to Justice, 68–70, and author interview with Fred Gray, Tuskegee, Alabama, April 11, 2007.
72 Gray’s plaintiff selection: Author interview with Fred Gray, Tuskegee, Alabama, April 11, 2007; telephone conversations, July 17 and August 20, 2007.
PART TWO: PLAYING FOR KEEPS
77 “All the boycotts”: Sikora, The Judge, 229.
9. BROWDER v. GAYLE
80 “while they’re juggling that hot potato”: Johnson, “Bombing, Harassment Don’t Stop,” 11.
80 “That N——who’s running the bus boycott”: Johnson, “Bombing, Harassment Don’t Stop,” 8.
82 “Are you looking for me?”: Branch, Parting the Waters, 176.
82 “You could read a happiness”: Williams and Greenhaw, Thunder of Angels, 212.
82 The description of the courtroom in which Browder v. Gayle was heard comes from two sources: Frank Sikora’s The Judge, 17–18, and my own visit. I showed up at the federal courthouse in Montgomery, now named after Judge Johnson, on April 10, 2007. Two uniformed guards informed me that I would not be able to visit the courtroom unless I had official business, but one guard agreed to telephone a clerk who worked for Judge Edward Carnes, now in charge of Judge Johnson’s courtroom, to see if he would allow me to visit. To everyone’s surprise, he agreed. Soon the clerk and I were standing in a beautifully paneled courtroom, bathed in sunlight pouring in from high, vaulted windows. I gazed up at a ceiling inlaid with bright Spanish tiles. It was a Southern courthouse reminiscent of the one in To Kill a Mockingbird, and in mint condition. I was permitted to make sketches of the room but not to take photos. The clerk kindly answered my many questions about the typical movements of plaintiffs, defendants, judges, audience members, and other court officials.
83 The description of the hearing, Browder v. Gayle, comes almost entirely from Frank Sikora’s book The Judge, about the life and principal cases of Judge Frank M. Johnson. As the sidebar on page 83 shows, Judge Johnson’s decisions during the civil rights years had a huge impact on the South. The first major case presented in The Judge is Browder v. Gayle. Sikora interviewed Judge Johnson at length about the case, including the judge’s memories and impressions of Claudette Colvin’s testimony. When I write, for example, that Claudette “widened” her eyes in talking to City Attorney Knabe, that memory or impression comes from Judge Johnson, as told to Frank Sikora (who was not in the courtroom that day). Sikora also unearthed the transcript of the hearing—the court clerk’s written record of exactly what everyone said—to help prompt Judge Johnson’s memory of events that had taken place several decades before their conversation. All who realize the great importance of Browder v. Gayle—the first major federal court verdict to go beyond schools in ruling that racial segregation in public facilities was unconstitutional—owe a debt of gratitude to Frank Sikora.
10. RAGE IN MONTGOMERY
91 “Judge, as far as I’m concerned”: Sikora, The Judge, 35–37.
92 “If I had been in your shoes”: Sikora, The Judge, 41.
92 “We hold that the statutes” (sidebar): Sikora, The Judge, 38–39.
95 “My heart began to throb”: King, Stride Toward Freedom, 160.
95 “we will continue to walk”: Branch, Parting the Waters, 194.
95 “I guess we’ll have to abide”: Sikora, The Judge, 43.
95 “I rode the bus” (sidebar): Author interview with Annie Larkin Price, by telephone, February 19, 2007.
95 “Darling,” she explained, “the bus boycott” (sidebar): Levine, Freedom’s Children, 31.
95 “I was cooking”: Hampton and Fayer, Voices of Freedom, 32.
96 “I believe you are”: King, Stride Toward Freedom, 173
96 “It is interesting”: Sikora, The Judge, 44.
97 “Your house is gonna be blowed”: Sikora, The Judge, 46.
98 “We had gotten there”: Author interview with Annie Larkin Price, Montgomery, Alabama, April 13, 2007.
98 “The issue now has passed”: Montgomery Advertiser, editorial, January 14, 1956.
EPILOGUE
103 “I was met at the door”: Author interview with Frank Sikora, by telephone, August 2007.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Dianne and Clyde Jones for allowing me to walk through Claudette’s childhood home in King Hill when I visited Montgomery for research. Jeanne Smiley, the niece of Geraldine Nesbitt, kindly drove me around the city, pointing out landmarks of the bus protest and of her youth. I’m deeply grateful to Alean Bowser and Annie Larkin Price for talking with me and providing photographs. I thank the famed civil rights attorney Fred Gray, who answered my questions at his law offices in Tuskegee and afterward by phone.
For advice, wisdom, connections, and overall resourcefulness, I thank Georgette Norman, director of the Rosa Parks Library and Museum. Norwood Kerr and Meredith McLemore of the Alabama State Archives provided helpful research assistance, as did Linda Harvey of Alabama State University.
For help in obtaining photographs and rights to publish them, I thank Kenneth Hare, Wanda Lloyd, and Karen Doerr of the Montgomery Advertiser; John Thorp of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University; Claudette’s sister Gloria Laster; Ashni Mohnot of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute; Penny Weaver; Laura Anderson of the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum; Judge Reese McKinney, Jr.; Tricia O’Connor of the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis; and John Broderick.
This book would
not exist without the generosity of the USA Today reporter Richard Willing, who put me in touch with Claudette. I thank my longtime friend and editor Melanie Kroupa for her faith in this book and skill in helping me create it. Once again, Melanie’s assistant, Sharon McBride, helped immensely. Thanks to Grace Hine for all she taught me. I thank Kirsten Cappy of Curious City for insightfully commenting on an early draft of the book. Thanks to Cheryl Hart, Toby Hollander, and Ruby and Hannah Hoose for reading portions of the manuscript as it was in production, and for letting me read to them. Sandra Lee Ste. George shared this book’s creation intimately with me from first page to last.
Most of all, I thank Claudette Colvin for taking a chance on a writer she had never heard of. I hope I earned her trust.
PICTURE CREDITS
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, and we apologize for any unintentional omissions. We would be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgment in any subsequent edition of this book.
Courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama, 46, 117
AP/Wide World Photos, 56, 118 (top) (Gene Herrick, photographer), 96
Daisy Bates Collection, photo #192 (Arthur Freeman, photographer), Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville, 38
Courtesy of Birmingham Public Library Department of Archives and Manuscripts, (empty bus, 1556.30.47) 2, 114 (top), (crowded bus, 1556.49.59) 28, 105, (Fred Gray, 1102.2.51A.55) 43
Courtesy of Alean Bowser, 22, 24, 113
Courtesy of Claudette Colvin, 68 (bottom)
Courtesy of the Colvin and Gadson family, 10, 114 (bottom)
Don Cravens / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images, 42, 67 (left), 67 (right), 70, 86
Carl Iwasaki / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images, 26 (bottom)
Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University, 6 (bottom), 16 (bottom), 20, 115, 125
Library of Congress, 4 (left), 4 (right), 6 (top), 13, 16 (top), 41, 53, 109
Courtesy of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, 48
The City of Montgomery, 33 (right)
Montgomery Advertiser, 36, 61, 64, 68 (top), 74, 78, 90, 97, 100 (Mickey Welsh, photographer), 104 (Mickey Welsh, photographer), 116, 118 (bottom), 119, 121
Montgomery County Archives, 81
Courtesy of Annie L. Price, a childhood friend of Claudette Colvin, 18, 123
Courtesy of St. Jude Educational Institute, Montgomery, Alabama, 54
Courtesy of Jeanne Smiley, 26 (top)
Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Gift of Marion Palfi, 5
Troy University’s Rosa Parks Library & Museum, 33 (left)
Courtesy of Penny Weaver, 93
INDEX
Abernathy, Ralph, 4, 44, 62, 96, 98, 99
Africa, 27, 51
Alabama Journal, 46, 47
Alabama State College (ASC), 8, 25, 27, 37, 59, 84, 99
boycott flyers produced at, 58
Claudette at, 102
Gray at, 42
Women’s Political Council members from faculty of, 38, 48
Angelou, Maya, 57
Army, U.S., 15
Articles of Confederation, 25
Atlanta, segregated buses in, 7
Austin, C. P. (Claudette’s biological father), 11
Baby Tell, 12, 13, 93
Bailey, Pearl, 26
Baines, Annie Ruth, 12–14
Baptist Center, 68
Baskin, Inez, 96
Baton Rouge, bus boycott in, 39
Bell Street Baptist Church, 90, 98
Bible, 13, 14, 25, 93
Birmingham, 62–63
segregated buses in, 28
Black History Month, see Negro History Week
bombings
of boycott leaders’ homes, 71, 78, 80, 98
of churches, 90, 98
Booker T. Washington High School, 20–27, 29, 40, 50
expulsion of Claudette from, 60, 92, 103
Negro History Week at, 9, 27, 30
remembrance of fiftieth anniversary of bus boycott at, 100, 101–3
testimony at Claudette’s trial of students from, 43–44
Bowser, Alean, 51, 67–68, 113
Bradley, Mamie, 53
Brooks (victim of police shooting), 9
Browder, Aurelia, 82, 84, 97
Browder, Manervia, 97
Browder v. Gayle (1956), 77–89, 91–93, 95, 102, 105–6, 120n
aftermath of, 95–96, 97, 97–98
Gray’s initiation of, 71–74
Brown, Linda, 26, 27
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), 9, 26, 27, 55, 71, 80, 102
bus boycott, 39, 47–48, 57–63, 65–71, 67, 74, 94–96
fiftieth anniversary remembrance of, 100, 101–103
free-ride transportation system during, 39, 66–69, 68, 70, 71, 94
indictment of leaders of, 81, 81–82
lawsuit brought during, see Browder v. Gayle
mass meetings during, 61, 61–62, 64, 66, 69, 74, 92
media coverage of, 68
Parks’s arrest as catalyst for, 57–61
preparations for, 47, 53, 54
trial of leaders of, 94–95
violence against, 69, 71, 78, 80, 94, 98
walkers during, 67, 67–69, 71
white support of, 68, 69
Carnes, Edward, 120n
Carper, Katherine, 26
Carter, Eugene, 49, 94, 95
churches, 4, 23, 40, 44, 66
bombing of, 90, 98
for elite versus working poor blacks, 48, 59
mass meetings in, 61, 64, 65, 92
white, 15
Citizens Coordinating Committee, 44
Civil War, 83
Colbert, Claudette, 11
Columbia University, 25
Colvin, Claudette, 10, 18, 22, 36
adopted by Mary Ann and Q.P., 11
ambitions of, 26, 27
arrest of, 9, 29–35, 33, 37, 39–40, 43, 51, 55, 57, 58, 63, 71, 85–87, 105
birth of, 11
during bus boycott, 60–61, 68–69
childhood in Pine Level of, 3, 11–15
children of, 75, 79, 89, 92–93, 99, 102
conviction and appeal of, 45, 46, 47, 48–49, 94
death of sister of, 18–19, 21, 22
experiences of segregation described by, 16–18
expulsion from high school of, 60, 92, 103
at fiftieth anniversary remembrance of bus boycott, 100, 101–3
hair and skin color of, 22, 50–51, 53
in high school, 18, 21–22, 25–27, 45, 50–51
impact of Reeves case on, 23–25, 27
interviews with, 106–7
in junior high school, 18
juvenile court hearing of, 40, 41, 44–45
King’s conversation with, 99
moves to Montgomery, 15
in NAACP youth group, 41–42, 51–52
in New York, 102, 106
organization of support for, 40, 48–49
as plaintiff in lawsuit, 73–75, 79–80, 83, 85–89, 92–93, 105–6
pregnancy of, 59–60, 62–63, 69, 73, 92
relationship with older man of, 52–53
restaurant jobs of, 98
on segregation today, 103–4
Women’s Political Council and, 47, 48
Colvin, Delphine (Claudette’s sister), 10, 11, 15, 17–19, 21, 22, 50
Colvin, Mary Ann (Claudette’s mother), 3, 11, 15–19, 50, 74, 93, 102, 103
during bus boycott, 60, 68, 69, 92
after Claudette’s arrest, 34
during Claudette’s pregnancy, 59–60, 62–63
and lawsuit against city of Montgomery, 73, 79, 89
as maid for white family, 34, 51, 68, 92
moves to Montgomery, 15
in Pine Level, 11–13
Colvin, Q. P. (Claudette’s father), 11, 15–19, 86, 93, 98, 102
during bus boycott, 68, 68, 69, 92
after Claudette’s arrest, 34
at Claudette’s juvenile court hearing, 44
during Claudette’s pregnancy, 63
and lawsuit against city of Montgomery, 73, 79
moves to Montgomery, 15
in Pine Level, 11
Colvin, Randy (Claudette’s son), 102
Colvin, Raymond (Claudette’s son), 75, 79, 89, 92, 93, 99, 102
Colvin, Velma (Claudette’s sister), 11, 34, 62–63, 75, 93, 99, 102
Communists, 74
Constitution, U.S., 25, 30, 71, 82
Fourteenth Amendment, 80, 83, 91, 92
cross burnings, 53
Davis, Angela, 21
Davis, Sammy, Jr., 26
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 23, 40, 48, 59
Dickerson-Waheed, William, 77
Durr, Clifford, 58, 69
Durr, Virginia, 49, 58, 69
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 83
Emanuel, James, 26
Evans, Dale, 17–18
First Baptist Church, 4, 44, 99
Gadson, Mary Jane (Claudette’s birth mother), 10, 11, 42, 60, 63, 89
Gadson, Thomas, 10
Gayle, W. A. “Tacky,” 39, 65, 71, 80, 82, 88, 91–92, 94, 95
George Washington Carver High School, 21
Gilmore, Georgia, 95
Graetz, Robert S., 69, 94, 98
Grand Ole Opry (radio show), 16
Gray, Fred, 42–43, 43, 48, 59, 93, 101, 113
Claudette represented by, 40, 43–45, 49
indictment as boycott leader of, 81, 82
King defended by, 94
in lawsuit against city of Montgomery, 71–74, 79, 80, 82–86, 86, 88
Parks and, 43, 55, 58
white boycott supporters and, 69
H. L. Green’s five-and-ten-cent store, 88
hair texture, attitudes toward, 20, 22, 26–27, 50–51, 53
Hamilton, Mrs., 31
Harvey, Fred, 50–51, 60
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 25
Headley, Paul, 44
Henderson, Donald, 26