In 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin stood up for her right to sit where she pleased on a segregated bus. As police dragged her from the bus she kept yelling, “It’s my constitutional right!” So, why has her story been ignored?
The NAACP considered using her case to advance their cause, but Colvin was a poor and pregnant teenager. Unfortunately, the NAACP didn’t think her story would get the attention of the white public. So, they tapped NAACP secretary Rosa Parks to try the same action. “[Parks] was an adult. They didn’t think teenagers would be reliable,” according to Colvin.
Colvin also reported that the NAACP thought that Parks’ lighter complexion and coiffed hair made her a better representative: “Her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class. She fit that profile.”
Parks went on to become a civil rights icon. But Colvin’s story did not become well-known until decades later. Both women were crucial to the movement, but unfortunately respectability politics dictated that Colvin’s story was not good enough to attract white approval.
Respectability politics won’t save us. All it does is hide the richness of our community and our humanity. Like Colvin, we must know our worth and refuse to remain silent when our Blackness is under attack.