Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Mary Quattlebaum: Hi everyone.
I'm Mary Quattlebaum.
I'm the regular reviewer of middle grade and teen fiction
for the Washington Post Book World.
And I'm here to welcome you to the National Book Festival.
The Washington Post is a charter sponsor
of the National Book Festival and has been a big supporter
for all 10 years of its existence.
I know that you're going to be excited
about asking the author questions and I just wanted to remind you
that there's going to be a Q and A session at the end of their talk
and there are mics right here.
So rather than trying to stand up at your seats
and shout our your questions you can actually go to the mic.
So as I said, the National Book Festival has been going
on for 10 years.
And it just keeps getting more and more amazing.
And what makes the festival amazing is you guys, the attendees,
and of course the authors.
I'm about to introduce two people
who together have an incredible story to share.
Phillip Hoose has published a number of books for young people
that shine a light on overlooked parts of history.
We Were There Too is about young people in United States history.
It was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Other titles include It's Our World Too, about youth activism
and the Race to Save the Lord God Bird
which made the Washington Post's best book for young people in 2004.
Phillip's most recent book is Claudette Colvin Twice
Toward Justice.
And it garnered big awards.
A Newbery Honor, a National Book Award and a place
on the Washington Post's best books for young people list.
It's a book that explores two wrongs done to Claudette Colvin
in this segregated south of the 1950's.
And we actually very happily have Claudette here today with us
to share her experiences.
[Applause].
So I just want to say a few words about Claudette.
She grew up in Alabama.
When she was 15 and arrested on a segregated bus she shouted
that her Constitutional rights were being violated.
And indeed they were.
Claudette later became a nurse's assistant
and recently retired from that career.
She now lives in the Bronx and is recognized as a pioneer
of the Civil Rights Movement.
So let's welcome Phillip Hoose and Claudette Colvin.
[Applause].
>> Phillip Hoose: Thank you very much.
I will start and then turn the microphone
and the show over to Claudette.
First of all, I want to thank you all for coming and I want
to thank the sponsors
of this fabulous event for inviting us to come.
I mean, imagine 150,000 book lovers in one place all at once.
I mean that's, that's -- there's the shout out right there.
[Applause].
I -- just to tell you a little bit about myself,
I grew up in Indiana very --
very much convinced that there was nothing good about me.
You know, that there was nothing I could do that I had no talent,
I wasn't very big, I was -- you know, not very hefty,
girls didn't seem to pay any attention to me at all.
I wasn't very athletic.
And in eighth grade I think it was I wrote a theme in English class
that my teacher Mrs. Hilderbrandt praised and in fact put
out in the glass case out beside --
out in the hallway and during open house,
during parent teacher night my parents saw that
and something clicked, the idea
that maybe I had some little knack of being a writer.
And I think it was that right there that made me get started with this.
I started out in my career writing a number of books for adults.
I wrote a book called Hoosiers,
about high school basketball in Indiana.
[Applause].
Thank you.
And I wrote a book called Necessities
about racial barriers in American sports.
My career really took a bend when I started having daughters
and I began to, you know, just listen to what they had in mind.
I wrote a book called, It's Our World Too
about young social activists
when my elder daughter Hannah did something really good at school
and I thought there must be, you know, dozens and dozens of stories
like this and I collected them into a book.
I then wrote a book -- you know, I interviewed a girl named Sara Rosen
who was a 13 year old girl from South Bend, Indiana during
that process and we were talking
and she said you know what the real crime is?
I said, no, what's the real crime?
She said, the real crime is that there's nobody my age
in my United States history book.
I said, that can't be true.
She said, go find a middle school history book and see for yourself.
So I did. I borrowed a book, took it home, it took me a while to read it.
And she was almost right.
There were two teens in a 676 page book, Sacagawea
and Pocahontas both teenage girls who guided whites you kept journals
and thus they got into history.
I went back to Sara and said, you know, you're right.
How does that make you feel?
And Sara said, it makes me feel as though I'm not real
and I won't be real until I'm about 20.
And I -- something about it got to me and I wanted to change that.
So I spent the next six years reading and researching
and writing a book entitled We Were There Too,
young people in U.S. history trying to restore or bring
to the national story the experiences, the bravery,
the courage, the muscle, the hope and righteousness
of youth into the national story.
[Applause].
Thank you.
When I was doing this research it occurred to me
that there was no episode in United States history
in which young people played a stronger role or made more
of a difference than the Civil Rights movements.
And if you think about it it makes sense
because the first major episode in the Civil Rights Movement was all
about -- all about young people.
It was about students, it was the Supreme Court ruling,
Brown versus The Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 that said
that public school had to be segregated -- had to be integrated,
rationally integrated with as they said all deliberate speed.
And some communities sure took there time, some up to 20 years
to integrate their schools.
And during my research for that I found all sorts of stories
about young people who had been courageous
and who had really stuck their necks out for --
for equal rights and for justice.
And I started looking for a character,
a person that I could write one book about.
You know, just one single person out of all those really dozens
and dozens of young people and I came upon this story
about a girl named Claudette Colvin who as a 15 year old growing
up in Montgomery, Alabama took the stand
that Rosa Parks became famous for, but did it nine months earlier.
That is she refused to surrender her public bus seat to a white passenger
when ordered to do so by a bus conductor.
And according to the story she, you know, caught the worst of it.
She was treated very, very roughly, arrested by police,
dragged off the bus, thrown into a police car, jailed.
But I had really never heard anything about this.
I began to research it and became more
and more intrigued for a couple of reasons.
One was not only did she refuse to surrender her seat
and take a private stand on this public bus system,
but she had the guts a year later and almost nobody knew this,
to join a lawsuit, a class action law suit,
claiming that the segregation laws on the buses
of Alabama were unconstitutional.
It violated the Constitution to separate people by race.
When I was doing this research I came across a couple of articles
and a chapter in a children's book that made it seem as though
if I could find Claudette Colvin if she were still alive
and I could find her and she would agree to be interviewed by me
that it would be a terrific story.
Because I don't think a story is any good really unless the person inside
it really comes out.
And I thought from what I had read that you could still find the girl
in that story, that -- how she felt about this, what made her so angry,
why she did what she did, what did that do to her popularity at school.
Did she get in trouble with her parents?
The kinds of things that young readers want to know and that I want
to know I felt would be available if I could find Claudette Colvin
and she would agree to work with me on a story about her youth.
Finding Claudette Colvin was not
and is not the easiest thing in the world to do.
Claudette lives in New York City, has an unlisted telephone number
and I tried for quite some time to find a way to reach her.
Finally I read an article in USA Today by an author --
a journalist who I kind of hope is here today, Richard C. Willing
in 1995 did a retrospective on the Montgomery bus boycott
and included what two teenage girls had done, Claudette
and Mary Louise Smith, another bus protestor.
And when I read the article
that Richard Willing had written it was clear that he had talked
with Claudette Colvin so she must still be alive
and this person must still know how to reach her.
So I called USA Today and found Richard Willing and talked with him.
And I said, would you be willing to relay a message to Claudette Colvin
if you're still in touch with her and he said --
you know, and I said that I would like to work
with her on a book project.
And he said I would.
And a couple of months later I got a response back
from Richard Willing saying I have talked to Claudette Colvin
and her answer is maybe when I retire.
So I made a little note in my calender
to ask the same question six months later.
So I did this twice a year for four years.
And always Richard relayed this message back
that Ms. Colvin says maybe when I retire.
I was never going to give up, but I certainly didn't want
to harass Claudette Colvin and even indirectly.
And I had really lost much hope that this project would ever occur.
And one night I think it was in the fall of 2006 I came home
from something and the red light was beeping
on my telephone answering machine.
And it was a message from Richard Willing, the reporter from USA Today
and his message was very brief.
It said Claudette Colvin says she'll talk with you,
here is her telephone number, good luck.
Well, I couldn't sleep that night.
You know, I stayed up scribbling questions and so forth.
And the next day, the next morning I called the number
that Richard Willing had given me and a woman answered
and she said yes indeed she was Claudette Colvin and we talked
for I guess about an hour and at the end of the conversation, you know,
we -- I thought it was a great conversation
and I said may I come visit you to talk further about whether we'd want
to do this together and she permitted me to do so.
Maybe a month later I went down to New York City and we met
in a restaurant and spent gosh, you know, most of the day talking
and agreed to do this project together,
to write this book together.
I asked her -- I asked Claudette at that time --
we had a big decision to make.
Do we want this book to be mainly for adults
or did we want the book mainly to be for young readers.
And Claudette said very emphatically I would
like this book to get into schools.
So that was the answer to the question right there.
[Applause].
You know, so we launched and the process of writing this book took,
I don't know, maybe about a year and a half.
It involved a number of interviews with Claudette, long interviews.
Some in person, some over the phone.
And it also involved Claudette was wonderful
in that she encouraged people
who were important to her to talk with me.
So I had full access not only to Claudette
who has an incredible memory for detail how she felt
and what happened during those years which were, you know, a while ago.
But also I was able to talk to some of her friends, I was able to talk
to other characters who were important and I did a fair amount
of traveling during this time too.
I went to Montgomery, Alabama where this story was staged a couple
of times and talked with people.
And I also went to the Library of Congress right here
which had a great deal of information and some photographs,
some images that we included in the book.
And it was quite wonderful to work with the Library of Congress.
And you know as the story developed, as I learned more about Claudette
and what she went through and the courage that it took
to do the things that she --
that she did, my eyes really, really opened.
For one thing I worry that the memory of how Jim Crow felt,
you know, how it felt to live in segregated society
with all those rules and all those horrible signs and all the customs
and all the demeaning traditions and so forth.
I'm worried that the feeling of it will be lost.
You know, that yeah we'll have Dr. King day every --
once year and yes we'll have Black History Month,
but the same stories will get told over and over and over again
and the same heros will shrink and congeal and curl up at the edges
and that the day to day memory of what it was
like for people will be lost.
The feeling, the feelings of humiliation, the feelings of anger,
just what it felt like day to day would be lost.
And that was one thing that I as an author wanted to do.
That was one aim of mine to do what I could through this story
to restore and refresh how horrible that --
and unjust that indignity was.
And of course, you know, as I went through it and I went
through the process of it my respect and admiration for Claudette
and the enormous courage that it took and the enormous contributions
that she made grew and grew and grew almost by the day.
I mean, imagine being 15 and taking the stand that she did,
that is refusing to get up, being hauled off to jail,
having that cell door close.
And then having the courage, you know, I mean,
she can tell you herself what the reaction was to the stand she took,
but then having the courage to do round two.
Very little is known about Browder versus Gayle which is the lawsuit
that really ended the Montgomery bus boycott and it's really curious.
I have no idea why this is the case.
I really do think that most people who care
about the Montgomery bus boycott see it as something that ended
in quite a different way than it did.
I think most people think that, you know, Dr. King
and all the boycotting and all the days
of not riding the bus just wore the bus company down until they gave up.
That's not true at all.
I mean, they weren't going to give up.
They were digging in their heels.
And the boycott itself was in a bit of trouble.
That boycott was ended by a lawsuit called Browder versus Gayle
in which four plaintiffs representing the ridership,
the African American ridership of Montgomery, Alabama lodged a suit
in Federal court claiming that segregation on the buses,
the public buses, interstate buses was unconstitutional.
Well, I mean, the odds weren't really very good
that they would win something like that
because the Federal Courthouse was down in Montgomery, but the people
who organized the lawsuit thought that because it was
in a Federal jurisdiction, the United States
and not a local jurisdiction, you know, they just might have a chance.
But the big problem that they had was getting anyone to be
on the lawsuit, to sign up for the lawsuit publicly, to put your name
on a lawsuit as the plaintiffs.
After all the trying that they did they only found four people
who had the guts to put their name on that lawsuit.
All four were women and two of them were teenagers, Claudette who was 16
at the time of the lawsuit and Mary Louise Smith
who I think was 19 by then.
She was probably -- I think she was 19.
Claudette's testimony, what she said to the three judge panel,
the questions she was asked, the responses that she gave are
in this book Claudette Colvin Twice Toward Justice, but I can tell you
that it couldn't have been easy.
And I don't think you can read what she did
without just swelling up in admiration.
It was just an incredible contribution to U.S. history and one
that just we couldn't afford to lose.
And I'll just conclude by saying you know as an author I was --
I was really worried about two things when I finally came
to understand Claudette's story a little bit.
I was afraid first of all that the story itself would be lost.
That, you know, we wouldn't -- we wouldn't know about this person.
I mean, I don't know if a story and I've researched this as much
as anybody where one single teen, one single young person made
as much a difference as Claudette Colvin did.
I don't think there's a -- there's a parallel to it.
But in addition to just being ignored and overlooked a lot
of the mainstream, the big deal history books would include her,
they did include her in a paragraph, but it was the wrong paragraph.
She was in danger of being portrayed wrongly,
as the person who was not Rosa Parks, as somebody who was,
you know, sort of mouthy and a teenager and somebody
that you really kind of didn't have to take seriously.
And, you know, the more I talked to her and the more I understood
who she was and what she had done I realized what a terrible injustice
it would be if that were the last word.
If it were left to that.
So not only did I want to restore her story, but I kind of wanted
to straighten out the picture on the wall,
you know, to make a right picture.
[Applause].
I have to say that it's been one of the great pleasures of my life
to get to know Claudette.
I mean, not only do I admire her and thank her for sharing that part
of her life with me, but she's just a wonderful friend
and that's been a great joy.
So I will leave the stage
and without further ado I will introduce you to my partner
in literature Claudette Colvin.
[ Applause ]
>> Claudette Colvin: Good afternoon, everyone.
It is an honor to be invited to participate in this festival.
And to share my story with you although Mr. Phil Hoose has
explained everything in full details.
But I'm going to give you a little of the emotional side
of it going back to March the 2nd, 1955.
It was an impulsive act, it wasn't staged and I told most
of the reporter ask me I just want to try to answer one question
that reporters have asked me
and that is why didn't you move when asked?
And my answer is I tell them all the time history had me glued
to the seat.
[Applause].
And you know what they say, now how is that?
I say, well, remember March -- February month is *** history.
Well, we wasn't exactly celebrating the whole month, but because we went
to segregated school we did it for a whole month because most
of the teachers felt that we had been left
out of the American history.
And only two men was in the Encyclopedia
and that was George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington.
That was no history books --
I'm going to say no books in our library.
Maybe other cities, but not Montgomery.
So that month Mrs. Geraldine Nesbit
and Mrs. Josie Laurence [assumed spelling].
Mrs. Josie Laurence was my history teacher
and Mrs. Geraldine Nesbit was my literary teacher.
And we discuss all the injustices that was perpetrated
on the black community in Montgomery City and then we discussed the heros
and amongst them some of the heros two of my favorite are females.
That was Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth.
Then we discussed other heros
like Jackie Robinson breaking a baseball barrier.
Then we go into W.E.B. DuBois and Frederick Douglas.
What we did we did the whole thing, the whole month.
So I said that's why I said it was --
it felt like Harriet Tubman was pushing me down on one shoulder
and Sojourner Truth were pushing me down on the other shoulder.
[Applause].
I was embarrassed spiritually by the struggle
and the bravery of these two women.
So I said they picked the wrong day to pick on me, the bus motorman.
But anyway he told you this story,
but as a child past experience my being able to go in the store
and [inaudible] in those days, not today, but in those days.
The popcorn, the peanuts and then we couldn't sit at the lunch counter
where white children would sit.
And then they made it where you couldn't pass by that aisle anyway.
So if I was -- as a little girl I would look across that aisle
and see the white kids and I don't know whether they was eating
anything any better.
But my momma said, honey, are you hungry?
She said I will take you to get you a hot dog that is
in the back section where only a little counter for Negroes.
So anyway those childhood experiences
and furthermore you couldn't [inaudible] hats
and -- but may I demonstrate.
Let me take off my shoes.
Now do you think a white person would try on a pair of shoes
that you -- a black person has taken their feet out of
in 1950, do you think so?
So that's what we went through.
That was one of the things -- that was while I --
that's the reason I said history.
The history of how we was treated had me glued to the seat
and I wasn't going to move that day.
Nothing. I refused.
They said, oh, my God you refuse?
I refuse to walk off the bus so two policeman they manhandled
and pulled me off the bus.
Put me in the patrol man car and handcuffed me and took me to jail,
booked me and everything and a horror that I said I really went
through what some of Edgar Allan Poe poems and explain.
I really went through [inaudible], but when that door
of the jail went [noise] I knew I was shut in.
But you know what?
I hate to say that.
I feel like one of those sisters in a Baptist Church
after Barack Obama became president I said I feel good.
[Applause].
That God Almighty.
Martin Luther King is not here and all the people --
first of all I was crying tears
because [inaudible] were murdered because of equal rights.
So I feel good Barack Obama became president of the United States.
So I don't care whether he's a -- come out as being a good president,
a bad president he broke that barrier.
He went in the front door of the White House and thank God.
[Applause].
I think that I played a significant role in the beginning of that.
Thank you, Lord.
[Applause].
>> Phillip Hoose: We would be glad
to answer any questions that -- that we can.
And I think you go to the -- there are microphones in the aisle.
>> Good morning.
>> My question what happened the next day at school
when you got back to class --
>> Claudette Colvin: I didn't -- excuse me.
I didn't go back to school the next day.
I was too traumatized.
I was too traumatized.
Ah, but when I did go back the parents had -- the other parents,
not my parents, but the student parents had convinced oh,
my God that Claudette Colvin that girl is crazy.
Stay away from her.
>> That's funny.
I was just about to ask you, like, how did everyone
in your neighborhood, like, react or we got it.
>> I [inaudible] yet, but what happened after you --
how did you get out of jail?
Did your parents come get you?
>> Claudette Colvin: My mother and Reveren H.H. Johnson came
and got me out of church.
>> And what did your mother say to you?
>> Claudette Colvin: Well, I had been discussing that because
or before this happened this -- this is just one of the stories.
When I was in the ninth grade one of the students --
a male student was arrested for allegedly raping a white woman,
but he was actually having consensual --
I cannot say it -- consensual sex.
>> Phillip Hoose: Consensual sex.
>> Claudette Colvin: Consensual sex
with this white woman, but they had him.
They demonized him and said
that he was a serial *** during the summer and he was
on death row when I was arrested.
So my parents they said -- they wanted to remain seated,
but my mom said I just couldn't ride that bus.
She would have just gotten off the bus.
>> Thank you for what you did.
>> How did they treat African Americans in jail?
>> Phillip Hoose: Did you hear that, Claudette?
>> Claudette Colvin: Beg pardon?
>> Phillip Hoose: How did they treat African Americans in jail?
>> Claudette Colvin: I don't know.
I don't know really.
I didn't say -- I didn't spend the night.
But you know I never -- you know,
there if a white person got fair treatment then you know they got
worse than the white person.
>> So were there people who were not surprised that you did this?
>> Claudette Colvin: People were not surprised --
>> Were there people who knew you
who were not surprised that you had done this?
>> Claudette Colvin: Yes, everybody was surprised that I didn't remove
when a policeman asks you to get up.
>> But was there anybody who knew something about you
that would help explain --
>> Claudette Colvin: They knew that I was going
through this what they call -- I had [inaudible] because I was study
for pre nursing so I know [inaudible].
The identify crisis that I was going through right as a teenager
where the role that I fit in and the first process was when I went
to school without straightening my hair.
[Applause].
>> I have a question about how the writing collaboration worked.
Claudette, did you read the chapters as they were being written
or did you read it at the end?
How did it work where the two of you were working together?
>> Claudette Colvin: Interviews on the telephone and in my apartment.
>> And then did you read just --
you didn't read it until it was finished?
>> Phillip Hoose: At the end when I had a draft finished
that I felt was getting there I went to Claudette's apartment
and read the entire thing to her.
It took one afternoon and then we took a break that --
you know, and then the following day and we had a tape recorder
on the table, on her kitchen table in between us and I, you know,
encouraged her to stop me any time anything seemed wrong either
factually wrong or wrong in emphasis or just, you know, got it wrong
and so we'd stop and, you know, she'd try to correct it,
make it right, you know, and then I kept a recording of it
so that I could, you know, sort of fix it later.
But that's what happened.
I ended up reading these manuscripts or this manuscript
which really helped me to hear it out loud so that --
anyway that's how it happened.
There are people over here.
I'm sorry.
>> What changes would you like to see take place,
realistic changes, in this country?
>> Claudette Colvin: What realistic change?
My goodness that is too big a question for me to answer.
There are so much going wrong now
and realistically first I want all children
to get a good education, that's the first thing.
[Applause].
>> My question is you kept --
you kept saying that you wouldn't tell your story until you retired
and you might tell it when you retired.
What changed your mind?
>> Claudette Colvin: Oh, well, what changed my mind is
that I did a interview with Richard Willings
from USA Today he did a story
and that was I think November the 28th, 1995.
And our -- my working environment is mostly immigrants
and when then they saw the picture, this Filipino nurse said,
oh my goodness Ms. Colvin I didn't know that you would do that.
The [inaudible] because I am a softy.
It's not that I'm a softy, but I have this southern attitude.
Not that I'm not a softy.
So they wanted to know the story and so I said, well,
then my [inaudible] said you should tell the story.
Because everyone thought that Ms. Colvin just sit down
and that ended the desegregated the buses.
So I said well I wait til I retire because it's unionized
and I didn't want no more labors on me being a --
and that was being too much tension on the job you know.
So I said wait until after I retire
so I can give you details like I wanted.
>> So are you retired?
>> Claudette Colvin: Yeah, four years.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Phillip Hoose: Yes, ma'am.
>> Have you ever thought about writing an autobiography?
>> Phillip Hoose: Have you ever thought
about writing an autobiography?
>> Claudette Colvin: Yes.
Right now I have -- wait one more thing.
My grandson is in medical school and I want him to get
out of medical school before I do it
because what I would write we're going to be criticized
because I would write stories that happened in the 1950's --
from 1939 when I was born up until the '50s
and these are not beautiful stories and I want to thank all --
I don't like to use this label, please I don't like.
White liberals for helping us end change this flaw in our country.
They march with us and they help the world see
that African American was discriminated against.
So I'm not going to do it until I --
until my son graduate that's what [inaudible].
>> Phillip Hoose: Yes, sir.
>> Can you tell us what you did between the time of the incident
through the time you were named the plaintiff on the suit.
How active were you in the movement during that period and especially
after the Rosa Parks incident?
>> Claudette Colvin: Be real brief.
I was not active at all.
I wasn't active at all physically active
because I was [inaudible] into that movement.
I wasn't active.
I was busy trying to support my children.
I have two boys.
I'm a single mother and I have two boys.
I was busy working.
>> And how did you become a plaintiff on the suit?
>> Claudette Colvin: They had no other --
they didn't have anyone else.
>> Phillip Hoose: They -- just to elaborate they tried, you know,
to find people, but the stakes were too high, the price was too high
to pay to put your name on a law suit against those bus laws then was
to expose your family, you know,
the people that you knew, your neighborhood.
And I talked to Fred Grey [assumed spelling] interviewed him
about that, the lawyer who put that lawsuit together
and it was hard sledding tyring to find anybody
who put their name on it.
And as I say, in the end he found only four people,
Claudette and three others.
Yes, ma'am.
>> Ms. Colvin, thank you so much for coming here today
to share your aspiring story.
I love you and you're one of my heros
and thank you Mr. Hoose for writing this story.
What advice would you have for young people today who want to stand
up for something that they believe in?
>> Claudette Colvin: To do it.
Stand up if you have to stand up alone.
[Applause].
>> Phillip Hoose: Any further questions?
Yes.
>> [Inaudible].
>> Phillip Hoose: The question was
who was supporting the bus company financially during those times
because they must have been losing money.
And they were losing money.
They were losing a ton of money, but there was such cultural support
in the city that they just wouldn't let them go down.
I mean, I don't know where the money was coming from to keep them going
because they had -- in the end --
first of all, at the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott
about 75 percent of all the ridership was African American
and the boycott really did work in that sense
in that not many African Americans rode the bus.
So they were losing a ton of money,
but I suspect that they were getting some subsidy from the cities,
from the -- you know, the business elite in the cities
who wanted that to keep going.
Because it was a symbol, if they went down,
if they stopped operation that was a concession.
So that's the way -- may I leave
with a brief reading so you can -- oh, sorry.
>> Were you surprised that you could actually be arrested by that?
>> Claudette Colvin: No, I wasn't surprised.
>> Phillip Hoose: We'll leave with --
I have a brief reading from the book and it's about what happened
on the bus and what happened afterwards.
So it goes like this.
This is in Claudette's voice, so just so you can have some sense --
some more sense of just what she went through.
One cop grabbed one of my hands and his partner grabbed the other
and they pulled me straight up out of my seat.
My books went flying everywhere.
I went as limp as a baby.
I was too smart to fight back.
They started dragging me backwards off the bus, one of them kicked me.
I might have scratched one or two of them
because I have long nails, but I didn't fight back.
I kept screaming over and over it's my Constitutional right.
I wasn't shouting anything profane, I never swore, not then, not ever.
I was just shouting out my rights.
It just killed me to leave that bus.
I hated to give that white woman my seat
when so many black people were standing.
I was crying hard.
The cops put me in the back of a police car and shut the door.
They stood outside and talked to each other for a minute
and then one came back and told me
to stick my hands out the open window.
He handcuffed me and then pulled the door open and jumped
in the back seat with me.
I put my knees together and crossed my hands
up over my lap and started praying.
All ride long they swore at me and ridiculed me.
They took turns trying to guess my bra size.
They cracked jokes about parts of my body.
I recited the Lord's Pray and the 23rd Psalm over and over
in my head trying to push back the fear.
I assumed they were taking me to juvenile court
because I was only 15, but we were going in the wrong direction.
They kept telling me I was going to Atmore the women's penitentiary.
Instead we pulled up to the police station and they led me inside.
More cops looked up when we came in
and started calling me thing and ***.
They booked me and took my fingerprints.
Then they put me back in the car and drove me
to the city jail, the adult jail.
Someone led me straight to a cell
without giving me any chance to make a phone call.
He opened the back door and told me to get inside.
He shut it hard behind me and turned the key.
The lock fell into place with a heavy sound.
It was the worst sound I ever heard.
It sounded final.
It said I was trapped.
When he went away I looked around me.
Three bare walls, a toilet and a cot.
Then I fell down on my knees in the middle of the cell
and started crying again.
I didn't know if anyone knew where I was or what had happened to me.
I had no idea how long I would be there.
I cried and put my hands together and prayed
like I had never prayed before.
Meanwhile -- this is my voice --
schoolmates who had been on the bus had run home
and telephoned Claudette's mother at the house
where she worked as a maid.
Girls went over and took care of the lady's three small children
so that Claudette's mother could leave.
Mary Ann Colvin called Claudette's pastor the Reverend H.H. Johnson.
He had a car and together they drove to the police station.
Now back to Claudette.
When they led mom back there I was in a cell.
I was crying hard and then mom got upset too.
When she saw me she didn't [inaudible] she just asked are you
all right?
Reverend Johnson bailed me out and we drove home.
By the time we got to my neighborhood, King Hill,
word had spread everywhere.
All our neighbors came around
and they were just squeezing me to death.
I felt happy and proud, but I was afraid that night too.
I had stood up to a white bus driver and two white cops.
I had challenged the bus laws.
There had been lynchings for that kind of thing.
Wetumpka Highway that led out of Montgomery ran right past our house.
It would have been easy for the *** to come up the hill in the night.
My dad sat up all night long with is shotgun.
We all stayed up.
The neighbors facing the highway kept watch.
Probably nobody on King Hill slept that night.
But worried or not I felt proud.
I had stood up for our rights.
I had done something a lot of adults hadn't done.
On the ride home from jail coming
over the viaduct Reverend Johnson said something
to me I'll never forget.
He was an adult who everyone respected
and his opinion meant a lot to me.
Claudette, he said, I'm so proud of you.
Everyone prays for freedom.
We've all been praying and praying and praying, but you're different.
You want your answer the next morning
and I think you just brought the revolution to Montgomery.
[Applause].
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at LOC.gov.