Claudette Colvin Doesn’t Give Up Her Seat
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2022
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
March 2, 1955. Claudette Colvin and her classmates are let out early from school. They hop on a bus heading toward downtown Montgomery and sit in the back section, reserved for Black riders. Before long, there’s a white woman standing in the aisle, expecting them to give up their seats. 15-year-old Colvin refuses, and she’s arrested that day—nine months before an almost identical act of defiance from activist Rosa Parks will ignite the Montgomery bus boycott and the modern Civil Rights movement. Who is Claudette Colvin? And how does her story reveal the broader picture behind a protest that would change the nation?
Special thanks to our guests, Nelson Malden; Dr. Kimberley Brown Pellum, author of Black Beauties: African American Pageant Queens in the Segregated South; and Dr. Bettye Collier-Thomas, author of Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion. Thanks also to Philip Hoose, author of Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | History this week. March 2nd, 1955. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:12.0 | It must have felt like summer had come early to Montgomery. |
| 0:19.0 | It's pretty hot in the low 80s, but more than that, |
| 0:23.0 | the real defining feature of summer, at least if you're a teenager, |
| 0:26.0 | there is no school. |
| 0:29.0 | It's one of those days where a mini vacation appears midweek |
| 0:32.0 | as a kind of random gift. |
| 0:34.0 | They're the Wednesday afternoon faculty meeting, |
| 0:36.0 | so the kids at Booker T. Washington High School get let out early. |
| 0:40.0 | 15-year-old Claudette Colvin steps out into the muggy Montgomery air |
| 0:45.0 | and sees some of her friends heading downtown. |
| 0:48.0 | At Dexter Avenue, right near a tall column memorializing |
| 0:52.0 | Alabama's Confederate soldiers, |
| 0:54.0 | these black high schoolers get on the bus. |
| 0:57.0 | They pass their pink tickets to the driver and sit down near an exit door about halfway back. |
| 1:03.0 | Colton's in the window seat, textbook's on her lap. |
| 1:07.0 | The bus is pretty empty at first, but before long it's filling up. |
| 1:12.0 | The first 10 seats, the seats reserved for white passengers, they go quick. |
| 1:18.0 | And soon all the seats are full, so people start standing. |
| 1:22.0 | And as the bus approaches court square, |
... |
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