Four Women, Unsung Heroines of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

There is so much more to be learned and shared about these powerful, trailblazing women.  Their contributions to the civil rights movement have for the most part gone unnoticed.

Claudette Colvin

“Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that wasn’t the case at all,” Ms. Colvin said in an animated interview at a diner near her apartment in the Parkchester section of the Bronx. “Maybe by telling my story — something I was afraid to do for a long time — kids will have a better understanding about what the civil rights movement was about.”

(excerpt from a New York Times article from November 2009 entitled From Footnote to Fame in Civil Rights History)

Sometimes decisions are made that have a pivotal effect on the direction of a movement and changes the course of history.  These decisions should be debated but they should not be criticized.  Unless we  were there at the time we have no insight into how things really were and what was necessary at that time to start a movement.

Rosa Parks was not the first person to sit in the white section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was not the second person either.  Rosa Parks was the sixth person and was chosen to represent the movement because she "fit the mode".  The NAACP wanted to put a face to the Montgomery bus boycott that people could identify with.

This article is not meant to demean or devalue the efforts of Rosa Parks or the decision to use her as the face of the boycott.  This article is to acknowledge and celebrate the women who paved the way for the boycott to happen.

Claudette Colvin

Claudette Colvin

Claudette Colvin was born on September 5, 1939.  On March 2, 1955, at the age of 15, she was the first person arrested for resisting bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, preceding the better known Rosa Parks incident by nine months.

Raised by her great-aunt and uncle, Colvin grew up in the King Hill, Montgomery.  King Hill by far was not the affluent section for blacks. It wasn't even considered to be middle class.  During an interview in 2000 she remarked: 

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"Middle-class blacks looked down on King Hill," says Colvin today. "We had unpaved streets and outside toilets. We used to have a lot of juke joints up there, and maybe men would drink too much and get into a fight. It wasn't a bad area, but it had a reputation."

Colvin was a good student.  She earned mostly A's in her classes and even aspired to become president one day. Upon being told to give up her seat she refused.

"It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right." Colvin felt compelled to stand her ground. "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, 'Sit down girl!' I was glued to my seat," she later told Newsweek.

Colvin, along with Mary Louise Smith, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Jeanette Reese were the five women originally included in the federal court case, filed on February 1, 1956 as Browder v. Gayle (1956), and testified before the three-judge panel that heard the case in the United States District Court (Jeanette Reese withdrew from the case due to intimidation from white community). On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. The case went to the United States Supreme Court, which upheld their ruling on December 17, 1956. Three days later, the Supreme Court issued an order to Montgomery and the state to end bus segregation in Alabama.

Aurelia Browder

Aurelia Browder

Aurelia Shines Browder Coleman was born on January 29, 1919. In April 1955, months before the historic arrest of Rosa Parks, she was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white rider.  She was listed as the lead plaintiff in the Browder v. Gayle (1956) lawsuit. 

At the time of the lawsuit, Browder was a housewife. She had several careers throughout her life, including working as a nurse, midwife, seamstress, and businesswoman. She earned a bachelor's degree in science with honors from Alabama State University.

Browder was affiliated with several civil rights groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Montgomery Improvement Association, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

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Mary Louise Smith

Mary Louise Smith was born in 1937.  She was arrested in October 1955 at the age of 18 in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat on the segregated bus system. 

It has been reported that he NAACP rejected her as a defendant in their test case because her father was rumored to be an alcoholic.

Mary Louise Smith

Susie McDonald

Susie McDonald

Susie McDonald was a woman in her seventies who refused to give up her seat.