<div dir="ltr"><font face="georgia, serif">Good Morning Visionaries:</font><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">For those who do not get the Daily News here is my MLK column for this year. Read all my columns on civil rights at </font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><a href="http://webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/CivilRights.htm">webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/CivilRights.htm</a></font><span style="font-family:georgia,serif"> </span></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">May we all live out King's Dream,</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">nfg</font></div><div><div><p align="center" style="text-align:center"><b><font face="georgia, serif">Claudette
Colvin went before Rosa Parks</font></b></p>
<p align="center" style="text-align:center"><font face="georgia, serif">By
Nick Gier, The Palouse Pundit</font></p>
<p align="center" style="text-align:center"><i><font face="georgia, serif">Claudette gave all of us moral courage. If
she had not done </font></i></p><p align="center" style="text-align:center"><i><font face="georgia, serif">what she did, </font></i><i><font face="georgia, serif">I am not sure that we would have been </font></i></p><p align="center" style="text-align:center"><i><font face="georgia, serif">able to mount the support for Mrs. Rosa Parks.</font></i></p>
<p align="center" style="text-align:center"><font face="georgia, serif">--Fred
Gray, civil rights attorney</font></p>
<p><font face="georgia, serif"> Nine
months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus,
15-year-old Claudette Colvin did the same and was arrested for violating
segregation law, disorderly conduct, and assault. </font></p>
<p><font face="georgia, serif"> Colvin
found that she was fully prepared for her act of civil disobedience. At Booker T. Washington High School that
month she and her classmates had been studying African American history. </font></p>
<p style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">Later
Colvin would reminisce: "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."</font></p>
<p style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">The
Montgomery Women’s Political Council was responsible for initiating the
successful 381-day bus boycott. David Garrow, author of <em>Bearing the Cross, </em><em><span style="font-style:normal">reminds us that</span></em>
civil rights activists were "often young people and often more than 50
percent women." Rosa Parks complained about sexism in the movement, and
the tendency for the black men in suits to take credit for all the victories.</font></p>
<p style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">A bus
boycott had been on the minds of black leaders for some time, but they decided
that Parks, rather than Colvin, was the person who would be the best symbol of
the bus boycott. </font></p>
<p style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">There were
three reasons why it was Parks rather than Colvin:</font></p>
<p style="margin-left:1in"><font face="georgia, serif">·<span style="font-stretch:normal">
</span>Colvin
was thought to be emotional, unstable, and therefore unreliable. </font></p>
<p style="margin-left:1in"><font face="georgia, serif">·<span style="font-stretch:normal">
</span>She
wore her hair in cornrows and refused to straighten it as most black women
did. </font></p>
<p style="margin-left:1in"><font face="georgia, serif">·<span style="font-stretch:normal">
</span>She
became pregnant early in 1956 in what she said was a non-consensual
relationship. </font></p>
<p style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">With the
support of the 26-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr., Colvin and three other
women filed suit against the city of Montgomery. In May 1956 they gave testimony, and in
December 1956 the Supreme Court ruled in <i>Browder v. Gayle</i> that the
Montgomery bus system violated African American constitutional rights. </font></p>
<p style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">About not
being recognized Colvin said: "I'm not disappointed. Let the people know
Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. But also let them know that
attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that
led to the end of segregation."</font></p>
<p style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">In his
book <i>Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice</i>, Phillip Hoose claims that
“it would be impossible to tell the story of the civil rights movement without
Claudette. Rosa Parks has to scoot over a little bit." </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">On
the day of her arrest Colvin had just turned in a student paper about her
people not being allowed to try on clothes at Montgomery stores. This reminded
me of the doctrine of untouchability, which is still, despite laws against it, applied
to India’s lowest castes.</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">In
Hoose’s book Colvin remembers an incident in which, as a four-year-old, she
allowed a white boy to touch her. With
the white mother nodding her approval, Colvin’s mother slapped her in the face
and shouted “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to touch them?” </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif"> </font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">As
a disgraced unwed mother, rejected by blacks and whites, Colvin fled to New
York to find work. Working as a
domestic, she was shocked when the lady of the house piled her dirty clothes on
top of hers and asked her to wash them together. </font><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;text-indent:0.5in">Colvin
remembers her feelings: "That's when I knew I was out of the South. That
could just never have happened there."</span></p>
<p class=""><font face="georgia, serif">Colvin’s comments about the 2008 election
are poignant: "Being dragged off that bus was worth it just to see Barack
Obama become president, because so many others gave their lives and didn't get
to see it. Thank God I got to see it.”</font></p>
<p class=""><font face="georgia, serif"> </font><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">Nick Gier taught philosophy at the
University of Idaho for 31 years. </span></p></div><font face="georgia, serif">-- <br></font><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="height:auto;width:auto"> <div> <div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><div><font face="georgia, serif">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. <br><br>-Greek proverb</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your
own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
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