Claudette Colvin (21 page)

King, M. L., Jr. “Statement Delivered at the Prayer Pilgrimage Protesting the Electrocution of Jeremiah Reeves.” From the Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., vol. 4, January 1957–1958, April 6, 1958.

“Negroes Stop Riding Montgomery Buses in Protest over Jim Crow.”
Jet
, December 22, 1955, 12–15.

Thornton, J. Mills, III. “Challenge and Response in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–6.”
Alabama Review
33 (July 1980): 163–235.

Willing, Richard. “Then Teens, They ‘Stood Up for Something.' ”
USA Today
, November 28, 1995. A long, well-written front-page story about Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith.

Younge, Gary. “She Would Not Be Moved.”
The Guardian
, December 16, 2000.

www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/
will take you to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. Here you can inspect an array of objects, signs, cartoons, and other materials related to racial segregation and civil rights.

www.riversofchange.org
is the Internet address for a fine set of educational materials on
Browder v. Gayle
and the plaintiffs, including Claudette. The DVD, curriculum guide, and workbook emphasize rights that were recaptured by the landmark decision.

www.stanford.edu/group/King/
is the Web site for the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. Especially helpful to educators is the “Liberation Curriculum,” presenting a wide range of materials related to the African-American freedom struggle.

T
he “Claudette” sections come from a series of fourteen interviews I conducted with Claudette Colvin between January 1 and September 13, 2007. Three of these interviews took place in person in New York City, the others by telephone. Almost all lasted more than an hour, and those in New York extended through much of the day. We also had many shorter conversations, when I would call her to clarify something or ask another question or two. Finally, Claudette let me read aloud the text of the entire book to her, sometimes stopping me to make corrections or to change the emphasis of a particular account.

Fred Gray also granted me four interviews, one at his office in Tuskegee, Alabama, and three by phone. None was as lengthy as the average interview with Claudette, but he generously answered all the questions I asked. Information from Alean Bowser, Annie Larkin Price, and Frank Sikora also derives from personal interviews.

The notes here refer to sources of quoted material. Unless otherwise noted, references are to books and articles cited in the bibliography.

4 “The only professional jobs”: Hampton and Fayer,
Voices of Freedom
, 18–19.

7 City ordinance since 1906: Garrow, “Origins,” 22.

8 “The ten empty seats became”: Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 35.

8 “There were no Negro drivers”: King,
Stride Toward Freedom
, 40–41.

8 Stories about mistreatment of black bus riders: Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 7–9, 21–22; King,
Stride Toward Freedom
, 147–48.

15 Description of King Hill: Claudette's memories are supplemented by my own visit to the neighborhood on April 13, 2007. It had changed very little from Claudette's girlhood. Neighbors were still close and knew one another well. The family who live in Claudette's old house invited me in to look around. They had
heard her story and were proud to be living in the house in which Claudette Colvin had grown up.

19 St. Jude Hospital in Montgomery (sidebar): From the National Park Service's “We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement,”
http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/civilrights/al5.htm
.

23 Tragedy struck once again: Jeremiah Reeves's arrest was not widely reported in local newspapers.
The Alabama Journal
, June 1, 1955, reports that the ongoing (second) trial was for “criminally assaulting a nineteen-year-old Cleveland Avenue housewife.” An article in the
Montgomery Advertiser
, March 24, 1958, says Reeves was arrested in November 1952 for “raping a white woman.”

23 “One of the authorities”: King,
Stride Toward Freedom
, 31.

25 One Girl's Memory (sidebar): Author interview, March 27, 2007. The person quoted, a classmate of Claudette's, asked that she not be identified by name. The memory of Jeremiah Reeves never left this woman, or Claudette, or many other blacks who lived in Montgomery in those years. At 12:13 a.m. on March 28, 1958, Reeves was executed in the electric chair at Montgomery's Kilby State Prison. At the age of twenty-two, he had spent nearly six years on death row. Nine days after his death, on Easter Sunday, Martin Luther King, Jr., addressed two thousand people on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol. “The issue before us now,” he said, “is not the innocence or guilt of Jeremiah Reeves. Even if he were guilty, it is the severity and inequality of the penalty that constitutes the injustice. Full grown white men committing comparable crimes against Negro girls are rarely if ever
punished, and are never given the death penalty or even a life sentence . . . Easter is a day of hope . . . It is a day that says to us that the forces of evil and injustice cannot survive . . . We must live and face death if necessary with that hope.” From
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr
., vol. IV:
Symbol of the Movement, January 1957–December 1958
. “Statement Delivered at the Prayer Pilgrimage Protesting the Electrocution of Jeremiah Reeves,” 6 April 1958.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/papers/vol4
/580406-001-Statement_at_the_Prayer_Pilgrimage.htm
.

Reeves's ordeal had a chilling effect on at least one black Montgomery boy. Fred Taylor was fourteen when Montgomery's buses were integrated. He later remembered, “I would sit [in the front of the bus] beside a white man, but I consciously did not sit by a white woman. I [could] remember a boy, Jeremiah Reeves, who got electrocuted for allegedly raping a white woman.” Levine,
Freedom's Children
, 30.

27 “We conclude, unanimously” (
Brown v. Board
sidebar): Williams,
Eyes on the Prize
, 34–35.

37 “The wonderful thing”: Younge, “She Would Not Be Moved.”

37 “[With]in a few hours”: Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 39.

38 “I felt like a dog”: Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 15–17.

38 Robinson's victory with white merchants: Halberstam,
The Fifties
, 546.

39 “In Montgomery in 1955”: Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 23.

41 “Both men were quite pleasant”: King,
Stride Toward Freedom
, 41.

41 “hopeful”: King,
Stride Toward Freedom
, 41.

41 “[We] were given to understand”: Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 41.

42 Fred Gray's boyhood and law school education: Gray,
Bus Ride to Justice
, 3–15.

43 Fred Gray's visit to the Colvin family: Claudette's recollection; author interview with Fred Gray, Tuskegee, Alabama, April 11, 2007.

44 Citizens Coordinating Committee leaflet: Garrow, “Origins,” 24.

44 Students remained in the hall: Author interview with Annie Larkin Price, Montgomery, Alabama, April 11, 2007. Ms. Price (then Annie Larkin) attended the March 18, 1955, hearing with several schoolmates.

44 “She insisted she was colored”: Halberstam,
The Fifties
, 546.

45 “Claudette's agonized sobs”: Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 42.

47 “The verdict was a bombshell”: Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 42.

47 “The question of boycotting”: Robinson,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
, 39.