After decades, civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin may finally have a charge for assaulting a police officer while refusing to move on a segregated bus removed from her record.
Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey recently said he agreed with Colvin’s request to clear her record, reported the Associated Press.
When 15-year-old Colvin was charged in March 1955, Montgomery’s city bus system was strictly divided along racial lines. Black commuters were forced to sit on the back of busses by law.
A bus driver called the police when she refused to move.
Another Black girl agreed to move to the back of the bus, away from two white girls who were also passengers. A police report said Colvin put up a struggle when police came, kicking and scratching an officer.
She was convicted of violating the city’s segregation law, disorderly conduct and assaulting an officer. Upon an appeal, only the assault charge stuck. Her case was sent to juvenile court and Colvin was placed on probation “as a ward of the state pending good behavior.”
However, she never got official word that her probation had ended.
Colvin’s act of defiance pre-dates Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of a bus in December 1955. Parks was already a 42-year-old civil rights leader when she boarded her bus.
While Park’s protest is known for ushering in the modern civil rights era in the U.S., Colvin’s name is not as widely known. Now 82 years old, Colvin wants her record cleared for good.
According to the AP, the civil rights pioneer has asked a court in Montgomery, Ala., to clear away her record. Phillip Ensler, her attorney, said he was seeking all legal documents to be sealed and all records of the case erased.
“I am an old woman now. Having my records expunged will mean something to my grandchildren and great grandchildren. And it will mean something for other Black children,” Colvin said in a sworn statement.
She isn’t the only one hoping for the record to be cleared up. Supporters gathered to sing civil rights anthems and clap as Colvin entered the clerk’s office Tuesday. Civil rights attorney Fred Gray, now 90, was there to show Colvin support.
“I guess you can say that now I am no longer a juvenile delinquent,” Colvin told the crowd. She said that the day she was arrested, her mind was on freedom.
“So I was not going to move that day,” she said. “I told them that history had me glued to the seat.”
By the time she was 20, Colvin had left Alabama and she would eventually settle in New York. When she would visit her home state, relatives worried what might happen to Colvin since court officials never finished up her probation.
“Her family has lived with this tremendous fear ever since then,” her attorney said. “For all the recognition of recent years and the attempts to tell her story, there wasn’t anything done to clear her record.”
Colvin now lives in Alabama again and will soon move from Birmingham to stay with relatives in Texas.
Ensler said it was uncertain when a judge might rule, the AP reported this week.
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