Happy 82nd Birthday, Claudette Colvin (Sept. 5, 1939)!🎈Colvin is a pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement & a retired nurse aide.

On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus.
This occurred nine months before the more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.
“On March 2, 1955, after taking the bus home from high school, the bus driver ordered Colvin to get up & she refused, saying she'd paid her fare & it was her constitutional right. Two police officers put her in handcuffs & arrested her. Her school books went flying off her lap.”
“All I remember is that I was not going to walk off the bus voluntarily," Colvin says.
“It was Negro history month, & at Colvin’s segregated school they had been studying Black leaders like Harriet Tubman, the formerly enslaved Africa s who led more than 70 enslaved Africans to freedom through the network of safe houses known as the Underground Railroad…”
“…They were also studying about Sojourner Truth, a former enslaved African who became an abolitionist and women's rights activist.”
“The class had also been talking about the injustices they were experiencing daily under the Jim Crow segregation laws, like not being able to eat at a lunch counter.”
"We couldn't try on clothes. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot ... and take it to the store. Can you imagine all of that in my mind?”
— Claudette Colvin
“ My head was just too full of black history, you know, the oppression that we went through. It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn't get up." — Claudette Colvin

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More from @blkwomenradical

6 Sep
Honoring #BlackWomenRadicals at the Vanguard of the Labor Movement: Nannie Helen Burroughs ✨

100 years ago, Nannie Helen Burroughs organized and launched a Black women’s labor organization, the National Association of Wage Earners (NAWE) in 1921.
“Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) devoted her life to improving the lives of Black women & girls. She often went up against men who could not imagine women in leadership positions &, throughout her career, campaigned for the rights & dignity of Black women.”
“In 1920, Burroughs organized a union for domestic workers, the National Association of Wage Earners (NAWE). According to scholar Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, this year marks the 100th anniversary of NAWE, which was a little-known but important Black women’s labor organization.”
Read 8 tweets
13 Sep 20
Mae Mallory (June 9, 1927 – 2007) was an activist of the Civil Rights Movement & a Black Power movement leader active in the 1950s and 1960s. She is best known as an advocate of school desegregation and of Black armed
self-defense.

#blackwomenradicals
“Mallory was born in Macon, Georgia, on June 9, 1927. She later went to live in New York City with her mother in 1939.”

#blackwomenradicals
“In 1956, Mallory was a founder and spokesperson of the "Harlem 9", a group of African-American mothers who protested the inferior and inadequate conditions in segregated New York City schools.”

#blackwomenradicals
Read 14 tweets
13 Aug 20
Starting in less than 30 minutes: Our event on "Radical African Feminist Movement Building" with host @NanaYBrantuo and panelists @stillSHErises, @wunpini_fm, @RosebellK, @kinnareads & Gathoni Blessol!

We're already filled to capacity for the event but we will be livestreaming!
The first question for this event is: "What is a radical African feminism mean to you?"

#blackwomenradicals
#africanfeminisms
@stillSHErises states that a key part of radical African feminisms is recognizing bodily, sexual, and political autonomy and that means trans and queer people are included and must be centered.

#blackwomenradicals
#africanfeminisms
Read 37 tweets
30 May 20
Some books 📚 for every time one of your elected officials tries to say the Civil Rights Movement was only about “non-violence”:

📖: “This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible”
by Charles E. Cobb Jr.
You can read an excerpt from Charles E. Cobb’s book here: “Guns made civil rights possible: Breaking down the myth of nonviolent change”: salon.com/2014/06/14/gun…
📖: “We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement” by Akinyele Umoja
Read 6 tweets
17 Jan 20
Happy Birthday, Eartha Kitt (January 17, 1927 – December 25, 2008)🎈

She was a singer, actress, dancer, comedian, activist, author, and songwriter known for her highly distinctive singing style.

📸: Photos licensed from Johnson Publishing Company.

#blackwomenradicals
“Eartha Mae Keith was born on a cotton plantation near the small town of North, South Carolina, or St. Matthews on January 17, 1927.”
“After the death of her mother, Eartha was sent to live with another relative named Mamie Kitt in Harlem, New York City, where she attended the Metropolitan Vocational High School (later renamed the High School of Performing Arts).”
Read 15 tweets
13 Dec 19
Today is the birthday and the death date of Ella Josephine Baker (December 13, 1903 – December 13, 1986), who died on her 83rd birthday in 1986.

A civil rights activist & leader, Baker was a key organizer & strategist in some of the most influential organizations of the time.
Baker was a formidable force & primary strategist in organizations including the NAACP, Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Baker was the founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
“While serving as Executive Secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), she organized the founding conference of SNCC, held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina during the Easter weekend of 1960.”
Read 8 tweets

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