Table of Contents

Chapter One: Life in 1900s.............................Pg. 4 - 6

Chapter Two: Early Life...............................Pg. 7 - 12

Chapter Three: The Bus Incident...............Pg. 13 - 16

Chapter Four: Later Life..............................Pg. 17 - 19

Chapter Five: Recognization..........................Pg. 20 - 22

Life in 1900s

       Chapter One

    Can you imagine a world where white children could ride the school bus, but black children had to walk? Think of a place where people with black skin couldn’t drink from the same water fountains as white people. Do you know a world where people with white skin were born in different hospitals than black people and buried in different cemeteries? This world was real. And it happened in the United States of America, starting in the 1860s.

    Some white people felt that they should be treated better than black people. They thought they had better skin and were better people than black people. They also thought blacks were ugly and didn’t deserve to be treated equally as whites. Segregation laws were used to give

more rights and a better life to white people. However, black people and a few whites who didn’t like segregation laws fought to end these laws. They wanted to be treated equally as everyone. Blacks fought for equal rights and did not give up.

    Many things were different from how they are today. Back then, white people and black people paid the same price to ride the bus, but they didn’t have the same rules. White people could sit up in front, but black people had to sit in the back. In that time, a chocolate bar cost 3¢. Today, it costs about $1.35. In 1920, 

women were allowed to vote for 

the first time in U.S. history. In 

that time, children played games

 like marbles and kick-the-can,   

Segregated Train

Also, a chocolate bar cost 3¢. Today, it costs about $1.35. In 1920, women were allowed to vote for the first time in U.S. history. In that time, children played games like marbles and kick-the-can, which is similar to hide and seek. Many black children in the southern United States went to school for only six months a year because they had to work in fields to help their families. For the same reason, most black children didn’t go past sixth grade. Many kids were also pulled out of class from a farmer to do farm work. 

Fun Fact: Black people had been arrested for refusing to five up a seat for a white passenger on a bus. Some had even been hurt or killed for the same reason. People on the bus - black and white - feared what would happen.

which is similar to hide and seek. Many black children in the southern United States went to school for only six months a year because they had to work in fields to help their families. For the same reason, most black children didn’t go past sixth grade. Many kids were also pulled out of class from a farmer to do farm work. 

Fun Fact: Black people had been arrested for refusing to give up a seat for a white passenger on a bus. Some had even been hurt or killed for the same reason. People on the bus - black and white - feared what would happen.

      Early Life 

               Chapter Two

    Claudette Colvin was born as Claudette Austin on September 5, 1939 in Montgomery, Alabama. She was born to Mary Jane Gadson and C.P. Austin. She was named after a movie star named Claudette Colbert. Claudette thought she was named after her because both of them had high cheekbones. 

    C.P. went to find a job and came back a year later, just long enough for her sister Delphine to be born. Then he took off again. The third time he came back, Claudette’s mother finally said no. Since her mother and father weren’t able to financially support her, when she was a baby, she went to live with her great-aunt and uncle Mary Ann Colvin and Q.P Colvin. They lived in a little country town called Pine Level, about thirty miles down Highway 91 from Montgomery.

  Mary Ann and Q.P. are the ones Colvin calls mom and dad. Both of them were older than her birth parents, but she loved them both. Later, Delphine came to live with them. 

    People always said that Colvin was smart, but she didn’t know that. She was inquisitive for sure. She was a tomboy, tall and skinny and very fast and loved to climb trees. She and her best friend, Annie Ruth Baines, knew every shortcut from Pine Level to their homes. Colvin was raised together by her mom’s friends. She would sometimes end up in Baby Tell’s house, her mom’s best

friends, or in Mama Sweeties, the best 

reader in Pine Level.

Claudette Colvin at age 15

    Claudette loved school and was very educated. She learned the entire second grade just by listening to Annie - she was a year older than her - and by hearing Mama Sweeties read from her Bible and Webster Dictionary. So they tested her and told her to sit with the third graders.

     Colvin was also very religious. She and Annie played church in their backyard. Delpinie would say her prayers as quick as she possibly could, while Colvin said her 

prayers for a long time. Asking 

for help and praying for everyone 

she knew. 

Black children in school

    She would also attend the Big Meeting Sunday every week. Later, they moved into Montgomery and into a neighborhood called King Hill. C.P. who Colvin called dad, was strong. He was the one who built the house in Pine Level. He could do anything and there was very little he couldn’t build, fix, or grow. He was also funny.

    Colvin loved going downtown. There were shops and food stands. A lady who worked at a hot dog stand and knew her father would stack soda crates so she could sit down while she ate hot dogs and drank her soda. But downtown made her angry as well. Shops wouldn’t allow black people to try on anything and they couldn’t go into fitting rooms like white people did. Claudette’s mother would trace the shape of her feet on a brown bag and carry the outline to the story because they weren’t allowed to try the shoes on.

    One time, Claudette went into a hat store with her mother and she wanted a certain hat at the store. Since the store keeper didn't want Colvin to wear that hat, she kept saying that the others hats were better and would fit her. Finally, Colvin shouted that she wanted that hat and didn’t like the other ones. Her mother, who was very shocked about what she said, covered her mouth with her hand and left the store quickly.

Fun Fact #1: Colvin was at a retail store with her mother when a couple of white boys entered. They 

asked for touch hands in order 

to compare them. Seeing this,her

 mother slapped her face and told 

her that she should not touch the

Black and white children at school

 white boys.

Fun Fact #2: One time, Claudette and her dad went to the optometrist. They were there early - she was the very first patient. There was only one chair left in the waiting room. The doctor told them to leave and come back at the end of the day, The optometrist wasn’t going to let them sit in the chair until all of the whites had sat on it first. He knew very well that no whites patient was going to sit in a chair that he’d seen a black sit in.

The Bus Incident  

                 Chapter Three

    Colvin relied on the city’s buses to get to and from school since her parents didn’t own a car. But these buses were segregated. White and black people had to sit in different seats. One day, on March 2, 1955, Colvin was returning home from school. She was sitting with her books on her lap in the color section, about two seats away from an emergency exit, in the Capital Heights bus. 

    Soon the bus got crowded and a white woman had to stand up. So the bus driver, Robert W. Cleere, commanded Colvin and three others in her row to give up their seats for the white woman. The other three moved, but Colvin stayed, Then, another pregnant black woman, Ruth Hamilton, got up and sat next to Colvin.

    The bus driver told both of them to get up and if they didn’t he would call the police. But neither of them got up. So the police arrived and convinced a black man behind the two women to move back so they can sit in that seat, but Colvin still refused to move. 

    So she was forcibly moved from the bus and arrested by the two policemen, Thomas J. Ward and Paul Headley. She was arrested at a city jail. Colvin’s schoolmates that were on 

the bus that day called her mom to 

tell her about the incident. 

A segregated bus

    This event took place nine months before Rosa Parks got arrested for the same reason. Colvin later said, “My mother told me to keep quiet about what I did. She told me to let Rosa be the one: white people aren’t going to bother Rosa, they like her.” Colvin didn’t receive the same attention as Parks for a number of reasons: she didn’t have ‘good hair,’ she was not fair-skinned, she was a teenager, and she got pregnant by a married man. 

    The news of Colvin’s arrest spread quickly. Many people talked about it. In school, she was a bit famous. People tried to stop bus segregation. However, some people were angry. Some people were comfortable, while others weren’t. Colvin also felt emotional. A lot of students at her school teased her.