What was claudette colvin charged with

Gayle , a federal lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of Montgomery's segregation laws. A three-judge panel ruled in their favor in June, and the U. Supreme Court upheld the decision in November, a ruling that gave legal teeth to the resistance and ultimately rendered the boycott a success. Despite her immeasurable contributions to the cause, Colvin continued to find life in Alabama difficult in the years after her fateful bus ride. She moved to New York at the end of the decade and decided to remain there for good after King's assassination in An anonymous figure in the massive melting pot of New York City, Colvin worked in a Manhattan nursing home until her retirement in , her neighbors and co-workers mostly oblivious to her history.

Colvin has since told reporters that she understands the politics that made Parks the face of the boycott, though she wonders why more attention hasn't been paid to Browder v.

Gayle , the landmark case that set the tone for many of the battles that followed. With March 2 now known as Claudette Colvin Day in Montgomery, and the city unveiling granite markers to commemorate Colvin and her three co-plaintiffs in late , it seems more recognition is finally coming for the overlooked hero who helped set the wheels of a new era in motion. The activist was much more than a woman who once refused to cede her seat on a segregated bus, as she spent decades fighting for civil rights.

By refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus to a white passenger in , the department store seamstress launched a major movement on the road to equality. Before she became a nationally admired civil rights icon, Rosa Parks' life consisted of ups and downs that included struggles to support her family and taking new paths in activism.

The first Black U. The self-made scholar promoted "Negro History Week" as part of efforts to embed Black studies into the American education system. After she couldn't find a solution for her own hair loss, the self-made millionaire took matters into her own hands. It will inspire them to make the world better. While juvenile court motions are typically shielded from the public, Colvin's legal team said in a statement that it released the filing "due to the unique public interest and historical significance of her case.

Ensler, Colvin's attorney, said the expungement of Colvin's conviction is "long overdue justice. At Tuesday's news conference, Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey said he was supporting Colvin's motion to "forever set aside and seal the records that taint Ms. Colvin as a violator of the law. Colvin eventually became one of the plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle in The following year, the US Supreme Court upheld the district court's ruling and ordered Montgomery -- and the rest of Alabama -- to end bus segregation.

Colvin's family and legal team say she is seeking the expungement now because she plans to move to Texas with family soon. Gloria Laster, Colvin's younger sister, told CNN that Colvin wants to get her record cleared so she can be an example for her grandchildren and great grandchildren. And that's what she wants for her grandchildren and great grandchildren. But part of it was Rosa. Our mother always felt that as long as Rosa Parks was breathing, she's the mother of the civil rights movement, and we shouldn't say anything to take away from that.

But also let them know that the attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation. Storyteller-actress Awele Makeba, who has made it her life's work to tell history through the words of its oft-forgotten witnesses, wrote, directed and stars in a one-woman drama, Rage Is Not A 1-Day Thing!

Claudette Colvin today answers questions from students at a School in Montgomery, Ala. Forty-nine years ago, an African-American woman boarded a city bus in downtown Montgomery Ala. When white passengers came aboard, the bus driver ordered her to get up and surrender her seat. Tired of being pushed around, she refused, and after repeated warnings, the bus driver summoned the police. The woman was arrested for violating city segregation codes and removed from the bus. This then-defiant act was one of the most significant moments, even a watershed event in America's civil rights movement.

Most of us can name the courageous woman who refused to yield her seat - her name was Rosa Parks. The date in history was Dec. Parks' historic act of civil disobedience galvanized members of the the Montgomery, Ala. Martin Luther King, Jr. What you probably don't realize is that the Rosa Parks incident was not the first act of protest against the Montgomery transit system, as a number of mostly unheralded African-America women in Montgomery also refused to yield their bus seats to white patrons, months before Parks did in Their collective actions, combined with an important legal action that built on the famous Brown v.

Board of Education case of , played a vital role in taking down the wall of segregation that was built upon the Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, eventually became plaintiffs in a legal action challenging Montgomery's segregated public transportation system, in a case is known as Browder V.

A federal district court, and eventually, the U. Supreme Court, would use this case to strike down segregation on buses everywhere. Perhaps the best-know of the four plaintiffs to the case was Claudette Colvin, a year old student at Booker T.

Washington High School in Montgomery. On March 2, , she boarded a bus with three other women. When white passengers boarded the bus, Colvin and the three other black women were ordered to surrender their seats. Two of the women did, but Colvin and one other woman refused. After the bus driver summoned police, the remaining woman with Colvin ran away from the scene, leaving Colvin alone, still refusing to give up her seat.

Police handcuffed and arrested Colvin, and forcibly removed her from the bus, as she screamed that her Constitutional rights were being violated. Parks said always do what was right," Colvin remembered years later. The NAACP and other activists were initially excited at the prospect of organizing a boycott and civil action around Colvin's case. Nixon discovered that Colvin was several months pregnant.

Nixon and local attorney Fred Gray were apprehensive about asking conservative African-American churches to fight on behalf of Colvin, who, it was later discovered, was also prone to outbursts and cursing. Many of the charges against Colvin were dropped, and a bus boycott and legal case never materialized.

Still, community leaders knew that the time was ripe to challenge segregation. The Colvin case, Douglas Brinkley wrote in Parks' biography, "proved a good dress rehearsal for the real drama shortly to come. The African-American community needed a citizen whose character was unimpeachable, a "pillar of the community.