Viola White did it first.
In 1944, 33-year-old domestic worker Viola White boarded a bus on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., and sat in the colored section. As more people boarded, a bus driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white rider. Viola refused. The driver threatened to throw her off the bus. She refused. He threatened to call the cops. She refused. The police arrived, removed her from the bus, brutally assaulted her and had her arrested. She was found guilty and fined $10 by the municipal court, which White refused to pay.
To appeal the injustice, White needed a lawyer who was willing to take her case. Spurned by white lawyers, she contacted local union organizer and outspoken NAACP President E.D. Nixon, who helped her file an appeal in the Alabama Circuit Court. When local officials heard the news, they organized a nonviolent protest against White. A white stranger kidnapped White’s 16-year-old daughter, drove her to a cemetery and sexually assaulted her at gunpoint.
During the attack, White’s daughter memorized the license plate of her rapist and reported it to the authorities. For months, investigators told NAACP leaders that they couldn’t find a suspect. Undeterred, Nixon was able to track down the license plate and trace it back to the owner:
Montgomery police officer A.A. Enger.
But by the time a judge signed a warrant, Enger left town after someone tipped him off that his arrest was imminent. Nixon vowed that he would never allow a young woman to be subjected to that kind of violence again. If he was going to fight segregation on buses, he’d need someone who wasn’t as vulnerable to the violence of white supremacy.
Ultimately, White’s case disappeared, and nothing else happened …
Until Coot came along.
When Claudette “Coot” Colvin was 8 years old, her Uncle QP tossed the family’s belongings on the back of a cattle truck and moved her aunt Mary, her younger sister Delphine and the family horse from tiny Pine Level, Ala., to a Black neighborhood in the state capital 30 miles away. An incredibly bright and intellectually curious student, Colvin performed so well on standardized tests that she skipped the second grade. At 12 years old, she was preparing to enter the celebrated Booker T. Washington High School. Claudette’s life changed on her 13th birthday, when her younger sister Delphine died of polio.
Three days later, Montgomery police officers arrested 16-year-old Jeremiah Reeves for beating, robbing and sexually assaulting a white woman four months earlier. During his interrogation, Reeves responded, “I don’t know,” when police asked him why he did it. Despite witness testimony supporting his alibi, prosecutors characterized Reeves’ statement as a confession. After a two-day trial, an all-white jury deliberated for less than 30 minutes before a judge sentenced Reeves to death by electrocution. Reeves lived just “down the hill” from Colvin, and she admired the older teenager.
“Right after Delphine died, I became very sensitive. Just about any cruel word or insult could start me crying,” she later said. “But Jeremiah Reeves’ arrest was the turning point of my life.”
Colvin began attending rallies and raising money for Reeves’ defense. Nixon and the local NAACP chapter successfully lobbied the state to overturn Reeves' conviction. As he awaited a new trial, rumors of Reeves being tortured and assaulted spread throughout the city. Fortunately, Colvin knew someone who actually had a line of communication with her incarcerated schoolmate. Reeves began sending poetry to one of the few people who was allowed to communicate with him while he was imprisoned:
Her name was Rosa Parks.
Raised in nearby Pine Level by a family of radical activists, Rosa knew the Colvins before she moved to Montgomery with her husband, Raymond. Before working as a seamstress for Clifford Durr, a white attorney, she worked on Maxwell Air Force Base while her husband worked at a Black-owned barbershop and taxi company. In 1943, Nixon recruited Rosa to the NAACP’s voter efforts and by 1955, she was serving as secretary of the local chapter.
In August 1955, Rosa Parks was scheduled to attend the Highlander Training School, a summer program that trained activists around the country. Before she left, she began recruiting young members to the NAACP so she could teach them what she learned when she returned.
Claudette Colvin did not wait.
On March 2, 1955, Booker T. Washington High School let the students out early for a Black holiday known as “grown folks’ business.” Colvin and her two friends were already seated in the “colored section” when the bus slowly filled. When a white woman asked them to empty the row, her two schoolmates complied. But Colvin had just finished writing a paper on segregation laws.
In her autobiography, she said:
Rebellion was on my mind that day. All during February, we’d been talking about people who had taken stands. We had been studying the Constitution in Miss Nesbitt’s class. I knew I had rights ...
I hadn’t planned it out, but my decision was built on a lifetime of nasty experiences. After the other students got up, there were three empty seats in my row, but that white woman still wouldn’t sit down—not even across the aisle from me. That was the whole point of the segregation rules—it was all symbolic—blacks had to be behind whites. If she sat down in the same row as me, it meant I was as good as her. So she had to keep standing until I moved back. The motorman yelled again, louder: “Why are you still sittin’ there?” I didn’t get up, and I didn’t answer him. It got real quiet on the bus.
A white rider yelled from the front, “You got to get up!” A girl named Margaret Johnson answered from the back, “She ain’t got to do nothin’ but stay black and die.”
After police officers assaulted Colvin, they drove her to the station while they took turns guessing the 15-year-old’s bra size. Colvin was charged with disturbing the peace, violating segregation laws and assaulting a police officer. But since there was no actual law that prevented the white woman from sitting down, Colvin was only convicted of assaulting a police officer.
Nixon and NAACP leaders thought: What if someone did the same thing Claudette did without resisting or disturbing the peace? What if it were someone who was experienced at maintaining their composure and knew the law? Considering what happened to Viola White’s daughter, the ideal person wouldn’t have children who could be subjected to retaliation. What if that person was actually trained?
According to Rosa Parks’ biographer Jeanne Theoharis, because of Claudette Colvin, Parks knew exactly what to do when she refused to give up her seat.
The rest is history.
Today’s reading list:
The execution of Jeremiah Reeves: Alabama teen’s death sentence helped drive civil rights movement by Jeremy Gray
Other Resistors by Jeanne Theoharis
Claudette Colvin interview with Vince Sims
