In detail about Claudette Colvin
It all happened in March 2, 1955 when Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat. She was taking a bus on her way home from school while having Negro History Month on her mind since she just learned it. She was sitting in her section of the bus when multiple white passengers entered filling up all of the white section. There were some white passengers still arriving at the bus when the bus driver order her and three others to move, the three immediately got up but not Colvin. Even though there were avaible seats now, the white passengers wouldn't sit since the Jim Crow Laws didn't allow people of color to sit next to white people. So they people of color had to move in order to show inferiority.
She was asked again to move from her seat by the bus driver but she stayed firm in her seat. The bus driver would alert the traffic police, once two officers came they had asked her why she wasn't moving. She replied, "I could not move because History had me glued to my seat...Sojourner Truth's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on another shoulder." She was later arrested by the police officers having been "manhandled" out the bus and shoved in the police car. From that moment Claudette Colvin became the first African American to refuse to give up her seat.
It all happened in March 2, 1955 when Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat. She was taking a bus on her way home from school while having Negro History Month on her mind since she just learned it. She was sitting in her section of the bus when multiple white passengers entered filling up all of the white section. There were some white passengers still arriving at the bus when the bus driver order her and three others to move, the three immediately got up but not Colvin. Even though there were avaible seats now, the white passengers wouldn't sit since the Jim Crow Laws didn't allow people of color to sit next to white people. So they people of color had to move in order to show inferiority.
She was asked again to move from her seat by the bus driver but she stayed firm in her seat. The bus driver would alert the traffic police, once two officers came they had asked her why she wasn't moving. She replied, "I could not move because History had me glued to my seat...Sojourner Truth's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on another shoulder." She was later arrested by the police officers having been "manhandled" out the bus and shoved in the police car. From that moment Claudette Colvin became the first African American to refuse to give up her seat.
More In Detail about the Montgomery Bus
Boycott
- More than 75 percent of the city's bus riders were black.
- Montgomery Improvement Assosiation (MIA). MIA's leaders were Ralph Abernathy, Edgar Nixon, and a young determined preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr. who was elected as the organizations president.
- The Montgomery Bus Boycott began on December 5th of 1955 which was 4 days after Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her bus seat to a white passenger.
- The de-segregation of the Montgomery buses was met with great violence. Several buses were shot at, black leaders homes and churches were bombed. A bomb placed at Martin Luther King's house was defused. Several members of the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan were eventually arrested for setting bombs upon which the violence, for the most part, died down
- It had taken 381 days but the Montgomery Bus Boycott was successful in ending segregation on buses and showed how economic boycotts by the African-American population could lead to great results in the battle for civil rights.