Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin (2009) | Hacker News Reader

Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin (2009)

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32 pointsY_Y15 comments

I heard about Colvin in an episode of The Newsroom during a typically engaging Sorkin-penned monologue: "March 2nd, 1955. A young black woman is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Alabama. Civil Rights leaders in the ACLU rush to her side. And she will be a symbol of the struggle against segregation. Her name is Claudette Colvin and she is 15 years old. She's also unmarried and pregnant. Civil rights leaders in the ACLU decide that Colvin is not the best foot forward and stand-down. 8 months later Rosa Parks happens, but during that 8 months a brilliant and charismatic young minister gets the attention of the community and is chosen to lead the bus boycotts. If Claudette Colvin doesn't get pregnant, if they'd gone in the spring instead of 8 months later, Martin Luther King is a preacher you've never heard of in Montgomery."

It’s all connected. She probably needed to sit down what with being pregnant and all. If she hadn’t been pregnant she might not have been on the bus or if she had might not have protested. But if you’re pregnant and tired, most would protest the injustice there.

In that era they may have been afraid of reinforcing the stereotype that black people were more likely to have children yoo young and outside of marriage.

Too bad, because maybe those issues could have been addressed at the same time. Today most of my single mother friends have daughters pregnant before 18 with no father in sight, and yes, they are also black. The stereotype did not need to be proven, but white liberals have done their damndest to encourage it. And no, abortion laws have nothing to do with it; these girls all want their babies.

How have white liberals encouraged under 18, fatherless pregnancies?

Some use this to be cynical of the Civil Rights movement.

Which is a weird critique, when the reason they had to be careful about their image was because of the general white supremacist and racist ideology of the time.

For example, American prisons are generally awful places where we mostly fail to provide prisoners the basic human rights we are required to provide. We even joke about prison rape as being appropriate punishment, despite it being clearly a cruel and unusual punishment. But, since prisoners are often not exactly sympathetic to the majority of the population, prison reform is an uphill battle.

Is prison rape unusual? I thought it was quite common.

It's a reference to the eighth amendment: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

Something that is cruel and usual is not cruel and unusual.

It's very rare for rape to be a legally mandated punishment, which I think makes it an "unusual punishment," even if it's not a particularly unusual occurrence (either among the punished, or among the world at large).

A couple thousand US prisoners have died of covid and hundreds of thousands have been infected with it, but that doesn't mean that intentionally inflicting people with covid is now a usual punishment.

The parent comment says "We even joke about prison rape as being appropriate punishment", I don't read that as referring specifically to legally mandated punishment, do you?

Funny enough, I learned about Claudette Colvin from this Drunk History episode. https://youtu.be/Tov2tLSFq5k

I also recommend Ida B. Wells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells#Early_career_and_...

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=356

(2009), but still relevant today.

Year added above. Thanks!

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