Claudette Colvin
By Rev. John Jackson
Her name is Claudette Colvin, and on March 2, 1955, at the age of 15, she boarded a bus in Montgomery, AL. She sat with three other Black people in what was called “no man’s land.” it was a section of the bus between the white section up front and the Black section in the back. Some white passengers boarded the bus a little while later, and the bus driver ordered Claudette and the other three Black passengers to give up their seats so that the white passengers could sit down. The other three Black passengers moved, but Claudette refused to give up her seat. She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, assault and disobeying the segregation laws.
She was convicted of all three charges at her first trial, but on appeal, the judge dismissed the segregation and disorderly conduct charges, leaving the assault charge on her record. She was sentenced to indefinite probation until 2021, 67 years after her 1955 arrest, a Montgomery Juvenile Court Judge expunged her record (she was 81 at the time of expungement).
In the book of Exodus, there is the episode of the King of Egypt who did not know Joseph (see my January 27, 2025 article titled “A New King”). This King instructed the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah, who were in charge of all the other midwives, to have them kill the boy babies who were born but to let the girl babies live.
The text says that the Midwives “feared God” and refused to obey the king’s order. When the king found out that the boy babies were not being killed, he summoned the midwives to him and asked them why they had disobeyed his order. They told him that the Hebrew women were not like Egyptian women because they were very vigorous and gave birth before the midwives arrived. These two stories illustrate that Refusal is Resistance. It is an act of Resistance to refuse to carry out or obey an unjust, unethical and unrighteous order or directive.
Sometimes, that refusal is overly demonstrative, like the thousands of rebellions and uprisings of enslaved Africans during the period of chattel slavery in this nation. Please know, contrary to popular skewed opinions, that there were thousands of rebellions by African people held in bondage in this country. At other times, that refusal was inconspicuously subversive, like slowing down production on plantations, breaking equipment or losing equipment, or escaping through the underground railroad.
Sometimes that refusal as resistance was subversively sung in songs called “Negro spirituals.” When Africans sang “Wade in the water, wade in the water, children, wade in the water, God’s a-gonna trouble the water,” they were not singing about baptism; no, they were singing about wading through the waters of the Mississippi to freedom. When they sang, “Satan we gone tear your kingdom down, Satan we gone tear your kingdom down, you been building your kingdom all over this land; Satan we gone tear your kingdom down.” They were not singing about an invisible evil force, they were singing about the Satan’s who were plantation owners, politicians and people who profited off their human flesh. Refusal is resistance. Sometimes, that refusal is overtly demonstrative, and other times, that refusal is subversively inconspicuous, but refusal is resistance.
In the text of Exodus, the midwives refused to cause harm, hurt, or destroy life because it would be an unrighteous act, and as they feared God, they knew that God would hold them accountable in the end. They also did not reveal their true intentions or reasons for their acts of resistance to their oppressor. It is foolish to publicize, broadcast, or share one’s true intentions and plans with their oppressor. That is why the new thing called “Hillman Tok” is unwise.
The intention is good to teach accurate Black history, but the mechanism is not because the oppressor owns the vehicle. Audre Lorde once said, “You cannot dismantle the master’s house by using the master’s tools.” Finally, the midwives were rewarded by God with families of their own because of their righteous refusal to obey an unjust, unethical, and unrighteous command. The text also tells us that because of their act of refusal as resistance, God enabled the Hebrew people to multiply and become very strong. The biblical scholar and womanist theologian Dr. Wilda Gafney said that “these midwives birthed the revolution in Egypt.” Without them, we would not have Moses, Aaron, Miriam, Joshua, or any of the other freedom fighters for the Hebrew people.
After Claudette sat down on that bus and was arrested and charged, her act of refusal as resistance influenced her mentor and instructor at the NAACP youth camp, Rosa Parks, to sit down on a bus in Montgomery, AL, in December of that same year. Rosa refused to give up her seat 9 months after Claudette refused to give up her seat.
Claudette, in reality, birthed the Montgomery bus boycott with her refusal as resistance. When Claudette was asked why she refused to give up her seat on that bus when the other Black persons gave up theirs, she said, “It was as if Harriet Tubman was pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth was pushing me down on my other shoulder. So, my history had me glued to my seat.”
As we face the onslaught of unjust, unethical and unrighteous demands being placed on many in these dark and chaotic days, may there be ancestors who help people refuse as a form of resistance, be that overtly demonstrative resistance or subversively inconspicuous resistance to help bring justice and healing to people who have been hurt, harmed and harassed by hateful people in high offices?
Be well beloved, be authentic, stay woke and be guided by the great cloud of witnesses of ancestors who came before us. Uhuru Sassa!
Rev. Dr. John E. Jackson, Sr. is the Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ-Gary, 1276 W. 20th Ave. in Gary. “We are not just another church but we are a culturally conscious, Christ-centered church, committed to the community; we are unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.” Contact the church by email at [email protected] or by phone at 219-944-0500.
