More Persons Unknown

I just found out about the two women who refused to give up their seats on a Montgomery bus before Rosa Parks.
They were Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith.
Fascinating what you can learn. Apparently Claudette Colvin was a High School student, and she resisted arrest less than non-violently. So she was convicted on an assault charge, and not the Jim Crow laws. Seems the same group of people that were behind Rosa Parks, were also there behind Claudette Colvin, including Martin Luther King, but they figured this wasn't as politically an appealing case as Rosa's later. See here. In fact, according to this site, she was 15 and pregnant, so obviously totally unsuitable for the Christian face of passive resistance! In fact, she was discriminated against by the middle class leaders of the Black community - not only was she working class, but she was also of a dark colour, and she got pregnant by something she now describes as 'Statutory Rape'. I don't know what she means by that.
But she wasn't dumb - her reasoning was "I do not have to get up. I paid my fare...It's my constitutional right." This is also a good site for a few other untold stories.
And here's a real interesting article. In fact, Claudette Colvin is bloody amazing. What's also interesting is the way she tells the story - shorn of the mythology of Rosa and her tired feet. She was sat with a pregnant woman, whose name is remembered only as 'Mrs Hamilton'. But what I noticed in her story was this: "I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on. That's what they usually did." So there wasn't a case of this one off act of rebellion at all, but this was a regular thing. They "would stop and shout and then drive on". This is what I truly appreciate - that the things that change the world are not some mythological acts, but tiny moments of coincidence, incidents of mood and human interaction.

Then there's Mary Louise Smith. Definitely NOT this woman - the first and only woman to chair the Republican National Committee.
There's little to be found about Mary Louise Smith. She was only18, and was arrested in October 1955, just weeks before Rosa Parks, but apparently her father was rumoured to be an alcoholic - a wino, in other words - and so she was not deemed to be a suitable candidate for martyrdom. Yet she said he was teetotal, so what the story was there, Ihaven't yet found.
It seems, there was a campaign awaiting to happen for months in fact, involving not just King, but very influentially, a guy called Edgar Daniel Nixon (unfortunate surname really!). (For links - here and here) There's also two other women who were apparently also involved, who I haven't got time to investigate now: Aurelia S. Browder and Susie McDonald.
All of which does not diminish the bravery of Rosa Parks, but points clearly in the direction that she was seen as a suitable candidate by the (male) political leadership of the Black community, who wished to find some way to oppose the racist laws in Montgomery, Alabama at the time. In fact, as Rosa Parks was a faithful member, and Montgomery Secretary, of the NAACP and King's church community at the time, I'm now presuming that this was all a bit of a set up!
And then, here's a bit from The Guardian article: "Betty Shabbaz, the widow of Malcolm X, was one of them. In a letter published shortly before Shabbaz's death, she wrote to Parks with both praise and perspective: "'Standing up' was not even being the first to protest that indignity. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery.
"When ED Nixon and the Women's Political Council of Montgomery recognised that you could be that hero, you met the challenge and changed our lives forever. It was not your tired feet, but your strength of character and resolve that inspired us."

No disrespect at all to Rosa Parks, and it was a totally worthy cause, but what I'm reading justifies even more my point that it isn't "one individual's actions changing history" as is often put about. It is, in fact, the result of a carefully considered political campaign of action.
The problem with that "one person changing the world" thing, is it's basically the same as the "kings and queens" attitude to history: that only powerful or super-able individuals change things, and the rest of us can basically rot in hell for all our capacity to change things. Without getting into a rant on dynamics, that's obviously a load of tosh, as - apparently - an examination of the Montgomery, Alabama movement in 1955 would show!
At the end of the Guardian article, Claudette Colvin, summarises the change in the last 4 decades: "What we got from that time was what was on the books anyhow. Working-class people were the foot soldiers, but where are they now - they haven't seen any progress. It was the middle classes who were able to take advantage of the laws." And she concludes: "There is no closure. This does not belong in a museum, because this struggle is not over. We still don't have all that we should have. And, personally, there can be no closure. They took away my life. If they want closure, they should give it to my grandchildren."

I think I'm a bit in love with that woman.