Claudette Colvin Read Online Free PDF Page B

seats across the aisle in the same row. Balancing her textbooks on her lap, Claudette settled back and gazed absently out the window as the bus pulled away from the curb.
    As the bus moved east along Dexter Avenue, the seats filled up block by block with white passengers getting off work from the downtown stores and offices. The ten front seats went quickly, and soon riders were standing in the aisle, keeping their balanceby clutching poles as the bus stopped and started. Just before they reached Court Square, Claudette realized that a white woman was standing in the aisle between the four seats in her row. Clearly the woman expected Claudette and her three schoolmates to vacate the entire row so she could sit down in one of the seats.

    C LAUDETTE: The motorman looked up in his mirror and said, “I need those seats.” I might have considered getting up if the woman had been elderly, but she wasn’t. She looked about forty. The other three girls in my row got up and moved back, but I didn’t. I just couldn’t.
    Rebellion was on my mind that day. All during February we’d been talking about people who had taken stands. We had been studying the Constitution in Miss Nesbitt’s class. I knew I had rights. I had paid my fare the same as white passengers. I knew the rule—that you didn’t have to get up for a white person if there were no empty seats left on the bus—and there weren’t. But it wasn’t about that. I was thinking, Why should I have to get up just because a driver tells me to, or just because I’m black? Right then, I decided I wasn’t gonna take it anymore. I hadn’t planned it out, but my decision was built on a lifetime of nasty experiences.
    After the other students got up, there were three empty seats in my row, but that white woman still wouldn’t sit down—not even across the aisle from me. That was the whole point of the segregation rules—it was all symbolic—blacks had to be
behind
whites. If she sat down in the same row as me, it meant I was as good as her. So she had to keep standing until I moved back. The motorman yelled again, louder: “Why are you still sittin’ there?” I didn’t get up, and I didn’t answer him. It got real quiet on the bus. A white rider yelled from the front, “You got to get up!” A girl named Margaret Johnson answered from the back, “She ain’t got to do nothin’ but stay black and die.”
    The white woman kept standing over my seat. The driver shouted, “Gimme that seat!” then “Get up, gal!” I stayed in my seat, and I didn’t say a word.

    E XASPERATED BY C LAUDETTE’S NONRESPONSE , the driver pushed on to Court Square, Montgomery’s major downtown transfer station for city buses. In the late afternoon rush hour, scores of weary passengers were lined up behind signs reading “Colored” and “White.”
    At Court Square, the driver snapped open the doors and hollered for a transit policeman to come inside and make an arrest. Seconds later, a uniformed officer clambered aboard and the driver pointed down the aisle at Claudette. “It’s her,” he said.
    During these moments as the bus idled, several passengers boarded through the rear door. One, a pregnant woman whom Claudette recognized as her neighbor Mrs. Hamilton, sat down heavily in the empty seat next to Claudette. Of course, Mrs. Hamilton was totally unaware of the standoff between Claudette and the driver. All she knew was that for some reason a policeman was coming her way. When he arrived, the officer saw that now there were
two
blacks seated in the disputed row. He ordered both women to rise. Mrs. Hamilton replied that she didn’t feel like getting up. Claudette also refused.
    COURT SQUARE
    If the historical importance of places could be detected by an instrument like a Geiger counter, Court Square would send the needle dancing.
    At Court