Freedom's Children (5 page)

The bus driver looked back through the rearview mirror and again told me to get up. I didn't. I knew he was talking to me. He said, “Hey, get up!” I didn't say anything. When I didn't get up, he didn't move the bus. He said before he'd drive on, I'd have to get up. People were saying, “Why don't you get up? Why don't you get up?” One girl said, “She knows she has to get up.” Then another girl said, “She doesn't have to. Only one thing you have to do is stay black and die.”

The white people were complaining. The driver stopped the bus and said, “This can't go on.” Then he got up and said, “I'm going to call the cops.” First a traffic patrolman came on the bus and he asked, “Are any of you gentleman enough to get up and give this pregnant lady your seat?” There were two black men in the back of the bus who were sanitation workers. They got up, and the pregnant lady went and sat in the back. That left me still sitting by the window.

I remained there, and the traffic patrolman said, “Aren't you going to get up?”

I said, “No. I do not have to get up. I paid my fare, so I do not have to get up. It's my constitutional right to sit here just as much as that lady. It's my constitutional right!” The words just came into my mind. That history teacher and my literature teacher, they were just pricking our minds. In literature, she was an unorthodox teacher. She didn't teach us regular literature. She said, “If you can read and write, you can read it yourself.” She taught us the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Articles of Confederation. She talked about the Magna Carta and the history of old England. “Give me liberty, or give me death,” Patrick Henry's speech.

Anyway, the traffic patrolman told the bus driver that he had no jurisdiction, and that he would have to call the regular policemen. When they got on the bus, I was speaking so fast I don't think they realized I was a southerner. I don't think they realized I knew what I was doing. The busman just kept saying, “She won't get up, she won't get up.” He was turning red.

I kept saying, “He has no right ... this is my constitutional right ... you have no right to do this!” I just kept talking and I never stopped. My mother used to say, “She can out-talk forty lawyers.” And I just kept blabbing things out and I never stopped. That was worse than stealing, you know, talking back to a white person. I had this high-pitched voice, too.

The police knocked my books down. One took one wrist, the other grabbed the other, and they were pulling me off the bus, just like you see on the TV now. I was really struggling. They put me in the car. Somebody must have said they didn't have handcuffs on me and I might run away, so they put handcuffs on me. And then they took me to City Hall. I remember one of the men saying, “What happened to this black bitch? This is a black whore.” He said, “Take her to Atmore [state prison] and get rid of her.”

The bus motorman didn't tell them I was a regular student. So I think they thought I was a passionate person who didn't know southern ways. I think that's what saved me, that and my squeaky high-pitched tone of voice.

Other kids got home and told Mama what happened. She already knew how hurt I was about Jeremiah Reeves. She knew this wasn't a one-day thing. This was a rebellious time that started with Jeremiah.

I didn't know what was happening. I was just angry. Like a teenager might be. I was just downright angry. You know, it felt like I was helpless. And I just couldn't get over Jeremiah being framed.

 

Mama knew Fred Gray, the attorney. And Mama let him and E. D. Nixon handle it. Fred Gray told me to participate in a group that was run by Rosa Parks. This was before she was arrested, before the boycott. Someone in the family said, “Rosa Parks? She's from Pine Level.” She and my mother were playmates together.

When I first met her, she talked about my mother. Then she said that I wasn't what she expected. “I was looking for someone tough and fiery-looking,” she said. And I didn't look like that. I was tall and skinny and I wasn't fiery-looking. I wore little round glasses. Then she talked about her organization. There were more kids, she said, who would be interested to hear my story, who were angry like me. They were kids from the other side of town and most of them went to Carver High School. They always thought better kids went to Carver than to Booker T. Washington. In the group most of the kids I talked to were middle-class children. I didn't stay involved too long, because it was the other side of town.

If I'd have been living in Rosa's community, it would have been more uplifting, because you would have had someone to talk to, and someone to walk to and from school with. But in my community I did not have that kind of support. In my community they were mostly working-class people. They weren't into politics. They were just hard-working people.

In Booker T. Washington, I was in the eleventh grade, and kids were mostly into dating and things like that. They weren't into any heavy intellectual things. The kids in school wanted to avoid me because they said, “She's the girl that was in the bus thing.” Sometimes I felt I did something wrong because I lost a lot of friends. And you know how it is when you're a teenager.

We had a saying that black people would be free in a hundred years. You know, from 1863 to 1963. But no one wanted to do anything about it individually, or get together and say, “No more. I'm hurting, and I don't like this.” The funny thing was they all wanted change, but they didn't know how to go about it.

I heard about Rosa Parks's arrest through a college friend, and that there was going to be a boycott because they arrested Rosa Parks. I was glad. I met Jo Ann Robinson during the boycott. She was writing letters to the white newspapers. We shook hands and she said she'd heard of me, and that my schoolteacher had told her about what a spunky student I was.

I didn't feel bad that all the talk was about Rosa Parks. Things keep going around in circles. There is always a need for a demonstration here or there. And once they told me she was my mother's friend, she was like a family member. It didn't bother me. If she had been a total stranger, it probably would have hurt me a little bit. We had the same ideas, the same thoughts.

My sister Mary once mentioned something about Rosa Parks. She said, “They never mention you. One day someone might mention you. They'll go through the court files and want to know who was Claudette Colvin.”

I'm not sorry I did it. I'm glad I did it. The revolution was there and the direction it was going in. My generation was angry. And people just wanted a change. They just wanted a change.

Jo Ann Robinson worked over at Alabama State [at that time an all-black college]. She was a great person. She helped write and distribute the first leaflets. Some of the leaflets fell into the wrong hands. The whites' hands. They notified the powers-that-be of the anticipated boycott. It was supposed to have been a surprise thing, but then there was lots of news coverage. The word spread around town like I don't know what. I recall my grandmother saying that some of her friends were threatened by their bosses not to participate and told if they did, they would lose their jobs.

When the boycott started, I just couldn't wait for morning to come because I wanted to see what was happening. I walked to school. As the buses passed me and my schoolmates, we said, “Nobody's on the bus! Nobody's on the bus!” It was just a beautiful thing. It was a day to behold to see nobody on the bus.

Everybody stuck together on the boycott. It lasted over a year, and we walked and enjoyed walking. Everybody felt like a part of the struggle because everybody had a part. Even some whites stayed off in sympathy, I'm sure. Black drivers would pass you along the street, and if they were going your way, they'd stop and pick you up. Most persons going across town would go through this area right below the school, and you could stand on the corner and holler, “Going across?” and that's all they'd need to hear. “Come on, get in the car,” and they'd take you across town.

A lot of persons were arrested because they were picking up people. Many were arrested for all kinds of trumped-up charges, but still they picked people up.

There was a central car pickup downtown at Posey's parking lot. Also at certain corners, certain churches, certain locations, you knew that a station wagon would come by, and you'd get a ride. Dean's drugstore was another pickup spot.

The churches had station wagons. The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) bought them with contributions coming from the North. MIA couldn't be licensed to shuttle people. So to get around state law, most churches had a station wagon with their names, not MIA, on it.

 

I vividly remember the court decision on bus integration. I remember the celebration at the mass meetings. And I remember seeing it on the Douglas Edward news, and feeling that we had won. It was a blessing. It was just a thrilling thing.

I can remember the first time getting on a bus after the decision. I remember thinking I didn't have to go to the back. Before the boycott, every time we'd go for church picnics, we'd rent a city bus and I'd go sit right behind the driver. You see, that was the only time I could sit behind the driver, when the buses were chartered for that purpose. After the boycott, I'd sit right behind the driver. It gave me pleasure.

I remember folks talking about what had happened to Mrs. Parks. Reverend Abernathy talked about it, and I remember the church raising money for the boycott. I had to slip to go to the mass meetings up at my church because my grandmother didn't want me to go. I remember how fearful she was for me. I had to lie about where I had been. I thought my grandmama was mean. She said, “Boy, you just can't go.” And I said, “Why?”

As a kid I never was afraid. And I was puzzled as to why my grandparents were so afraid of what was going on. Now, looking back, I understand—because of the intimidation and fear for losing their lives and all of that. My grandmother was a domestic worker. She was a maid for white folks. And my grandfather was a porter for a furniture company, delivering furniture in the city of Montgomery. My grandmother went along with the boycott and did not get on the bus. Although she was afraid, that was the thing to do. Her employer came by and picked her up. That's how she got to work.

 

At the time the boycott began, all these news reporters started following my pastor and Dr. King around. Something I guess happened to me, particularly as I began to listen to Dr. King's speeches. I can remember going to mass meetings during the boycott and hearing him speak. You know the mastery of the English language that Dr. King had. I can remember the euphoria, and how he would turn people on.

He would talk about the fact that you are somebody and you are important. This was compared to my orientation of being put down or told, “Boy, you're not going to be anything.” A classic example was people would say, “You knotty-head boy, why don't you sit down?”

But when Dr. King started talking, he'd say, “You are somebody.” And that began to rub off on me. It was right during the boycott that I began to have a different assessment of myself as an individual and to feel my sense of worth. Not only did it affect me, but I began to look at my family and how the white community related to them.

Before the boycott I'd taken the buses and gone to the back. After the boycott was over, I participated with a group of students riding predominantly white routes, deliberately sitting in the front of the bus. In our orientation for this particular project we were told to make sure we were well groomed. I sat up there very proudly. I would sit beside a white man, but I consciously did not sit by a white woman. I can remember a boy, Jeremiah Reeves, who got electrocuted for allegedly raping a white woman.

In some instances when I would sit by a white man, he would jump up and leave. I was thinking, “Ain't nothing wrong with me. I don't stink, I took a bath this morning.” When they'd jump up, I just thought it was sort of strange.

What's so amazing is that it only takes a few. You see, it was just a handful of people before the bus boycott. Nobody in their wildest imagination could have conceived that that kind of organization and cooperation would have been forthcoming. We were just a group of people going about daily life getting ready for Christmas. That was the biggest thing on all the kids' minds. Santa Claus. And then overnight it changed from just a sleepy little town.

One thing we all knew: something had to give. I'm sure everybody understood that. Blacks and whites. It was like a keg full of dynamite. Even in the quietness, it was too quiet. The whole country was too quiet.

The boycott was a real movement. It was so powerful. In a year you can build a great momentum. It brought together even people who were generally at odds with each other. We were very well aware at the time that Dexter Avenue [Martin Luther King's church] was a church for rich black people. It wasn't for just everybody. It was remarkable to see the rich blacks and the poor ones at mass meetings interested in the same thing. I was eight and nine years old, but I understood clearly. Kids know when some people look down at you. They know it very well. Those were some of the victories that are seldom mentioned—the victories within our race that were also taking place.