What Your History Books Won’t Tell You
As Black History Month rolls around again in 2008, I realize that there are still some marvelous stories of black leaders struggling for equal rights who have yet to receive the attention they deserve. We’ve all heard of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, but what about Claudette Colvin? How about Mary Louise Smith? Does Barbara Johns ring a bell? Didn’t think so. Despite the increased press that these three inspiring women received in the years following the Civil Rights Movement, they still haven’t become household names like Parks or King, but they have just as much to teach us about the power of unwavering commitment to justice.
“I just said I am not going to take this anymore,” said Claudette Colvin of her decision to stay put rather than give up her seat to white passengers, according to an interview with the Montgomery Advertiser. Her story closely resembles that of her sister-in-protest, Rosa Parks: they both fought unequal laws in Montgomery, AL by disobeying the unfair segregation on city buses and were arrested. The major difference is that Ms. Colvin did it nearly nine months earlier, on March 2, 1955. After arguing with the police officers who came on the bus, saying that it was her “constitutional right” to keep her seat, Colvin was promptly escorted off the bus and taken to jail. She was 15 years old.
In October of 1955—still preceding Rosa Parks—18-year-old Mary Louise Smith followed suit and kept her seat. Together Colvin and Smith later testified in the U.S. District Court case (Browder v. Gayle) that ended the bus segregation laws.
Yet while we tend to think of the events in Montgomery as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, a protest in tiny Farmville, VA four years earlier set in motion the end to school segregation. According to biography.com, 16-year-old Moton High School student Barbara Johns had had enough of the overcrowded and primitive “chicken shack” buildings that made up her all-black high school, while the all-white school in town had facilities that provided its students a dry, warm, and spacious accommodation. She gathered her fellow students and marched to the county courthouse in protest.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have written:
“[r]acism is a sin: a sin that divides the human family, blots out the image of God among specific members of that family, and violates the fundamental human dignity of those called to be children of the same Father.” (Brothers and Sisters to Us, 1979)
Despite their call for change, we still have much work to do, nearly thirty years later. Segregated neighborhoods and glaring economic inequalities between whites and blacks are among a host of injustices that are markers lingering racism in our society. Our country has a long history of racism, but it is also has a history of hope: the hope for a just society in those young people of faith who heed the call to be peacebuilders.
Catholic Connections
“Holy Scripture and Catholic social teachings proclaim the dignity of the human person and enjoin us to reform the structures of our society that ignore and undermine this fundamental truth. We are called not only to a radical conversion of heart but to a transformation of socially sinful structures as well.”
From “Dwell In My Love – A Pastoral Letter on Racism” by Francis Cardinal George, OMI.
Reflection Questions
How do you see racism still present around you? What can you do about it?
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