The Bus Incident Case Study

818 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Effects of racial segregation

The bus incident On the second day of March in the year 1955, a young, black girl named Claudette Colvin waited for the bus. She was 15 years old and lived in Montgomery. Colvin had just finished school for the day and was heading home. The city bus came, and she sat down in the area reserved for “black” passengers. As the bus filled up, left standing was a young, white woman. The seats in the white area were full, but there was an available seat in the opposite row of Colvin. Because of Jim Crows law- a law that said that a white person could not sit opposite of a colored person, the white woman refused to sit there. The bus driver ordered Colvin to move to the back of the bus so that the white female could sit down. Colvin refused to move. The bus driver called the police, and they asked Colvin to get up. Once again, she refused, and they asked her why she was still sitting there when they had asked her to leave. Colvin told them that history had glued her to the seat, that it felt like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman’s hand was pushing her down. Colvin continued by saying that it was her constitutional right to sit there and that she was not breaking any state law. One of the police officers knocked her books out of her hands, and the other …show more content…

Raymond was so light-skinned that many people believed that his father was a white man. In 1958, Colin and her son moved to New York. This was because of the federal court who had given her a hard time getting and keeping a job after the bus incident. As with Colvin, this also happened to Rosa Parks and she chose to leave Montgomery in 1957. Claudette Colvin had to drop out of college because some of the people in the community thought of her as a troublemaker. She lost most of her friends because of their parents who told them that they had to stay away from her. Some people called her an extremist, while others looked up to her and her

Show More
Related

  • A Review of The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    1075 Words  | 3 Pages

    C. Vann Woodward’s most famous work, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, was written in 1955. It chronicles the birth, formation, and end of Jim Crow laws in the Southern states. Often, the Jim Crow laws are portrayed as having been instituted directly after the Civil War’s end, and having been solely a Southern brainchild. However, as Woodward, a native of Arkansas points out, the segregationist Jim Crow laws and policies were not fully a part of the culture until almost 1900. Because of the years of lag between the Civil War/Reconstruction eras and the integration and popularity of the Jim Crow laws, Woodward advances that these policies were not a normal reaction to the loss of the war by Southern whites, but a result of other impetuses central to the time of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

    Read More

  • Book Review of The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    2071 Words  | 5 Pages

    Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow immediately became an influential work both in the academic and real worlds because of the dramatic events that coincided with the book’s publication and subsequent revisions. It was inspired from a series of lectures that Woodward delivered at the University of Virginia in 1954 on the Jim Crow policies that the South had reverted to in order to deal with the dynamics of its Negro population. The original publication debuted in 1955, just prior to the explosive events that would occur as part of the civil rights movement climax. Because of these developments in less than a decade, the book’s topic and audience had drastically changed in regard to the times surrounding it. Woodward, realizing the fluidity of history in context with the age, printed a second edition of the book in 1966 to “take advantage of the new perspective the additional years provide” and “to add a brief account of the main developments in ...

    Read More

  • C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    1420 Words  | 3 Pages

    C. Vann Woodward’s book The Strange Career of Jim Crow is a close look at the struggles of the African American community from the time of Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement. The book portrays a scene where the Negroes are now free men after being slaves on the plantations and their adaptation to life as being seen as free yet inferior to the White race and their hundred year struggle of becoming equals in a community where they have always been seen as second class citizens.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Blood Done Sign My Name By Timothy Tyson

    1020 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his book, Blood Done Sign My Name, the author Timothy Tyson tells the story of the highly combustible racial atmosphere in the American South before, during, and after the Jim Crow era. Unlike Margaret Mitchell’s account of the glory and grandeur of the Antebellum South, Tyson exposes the reader to the horrific and brutal reality that the black race experienced on a daily basis. Tyson highlights the double standard that existed during this period in history, arguing that the hypocrisy of the “white” southern judicial system allowed the murder of a young black African-American male at the hands of white racists to go unpunished (Tyson 2004, 244). The hypocrisy and double standard that allowed whites to bring harm to blacks without fear of any repercussions had existed for years before the murder Tyson wrote about occurred in May of 1970 (Tyson 2004, 1).

    Read More

  • Cornelius Dupree's Crime

    1095 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 1979 two black assailants forced a man and a women at gun point into the man’s car at a drive-in grocery store. As they were going down the highway the perpetrators robbed both victims, then forced the man out of the car. After a failed escape attempted by the woman, the two men drove her to a nearby

    Read More

  • Media Coverage of the Emmitt Till Murder Played a Major Role in the Civil Rights Movement

    1203 Words  | 3 Pages

    On August 28, 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till was beaten, tortured and shot. Then with barbed wire wrapped around his neck and tied to a large fan, his body was discarded into the Tallahatchi River. What was young Emmett’s offense that brought on this heinous reaction of two grown white men? When he went into a store to buy some bubblegum he allegedly whistled at a white female store clerk, who happened to be the store owner’s wife. That is the story of the end of Emmett Till’s life. Lynchings, beatings and cross-burning had been happening in the United States for years. But it was not until this young boy suffered an appalling murder in Mississippi that the eyes of a nation were irrevocably opened to the ongoing horrors of racism in the South. It sparked the beginning of a flourish of both national and international media coverage of the Civil Rights violations in America.

    Read More

  • Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    2031 Words  | 5 Pages

    The book, the Strange Career of Jim Crow is a wonderful piece of history. C. Vann Woodard crafts a book that explains the history of Jim Crow and segregation in simple terms. It is a book that presents more than just the facts and figures, it presents a clear and a very accurate portrayal of the rise and fall of Jim Crow and segregation. The book has become one of the most influential of its time earning the praise of great figures in Twentieth Century American History. It is a book that holds up to its weighty praise of being “the historical Bible of the civil rights movement.” The book is present in a light that is free from petty bias and that is shaped by a clear point of view that considers all facts equally. It is a book that will remain one of the best explanations of this time period.

    Read More

  • Analysis of the New Jim Crow by Professor Michelle Alexander

    761 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ty and their survival as a group in society because of restraint from the federal government in the ability to litigate their plight in Court. The Author transitions the past and present signatures of Jim Crow and the New Jim Crow with the suggestion that the New Jim Crow, by mass incarceration and racism as a whole, is marginalizes and relegates Blacks to residential, educational and constitutionally endowed service to Country.

    Read More

  • negroes with guns

    528 Words  | 2 Pages

    -     on June 23, Williams was driving when a heavy car came up from behind him and tried to force his car off the embankment and over a cliff with a 75 ft. drop off. The bumpers of the two cars were stuck and the cars had to pass right by a highway patrol station, which was a 35 mile and hour zone, but the car was pushing his at 70 miles per hour. Williams started blowing his horn hoping to attract the attention of the patrolmen, but when they saw they just lifted their hands and laughed. He was finally able to rock loose from the other car’s bumper and make a sharp turn into a ditch. He went to the police about it, but they would not do anything because he was black. The police in Monroe never did anything to help blacks

    Read More

  • The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    1332 Words  | 3 Pages

    C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow looks into the emergence of the Jim Crow laws beginning with the Reconstruction era and following through the Civil Rights Movement. Woodward contends that Jim Crow laws were not a part of the Reconstruction or the following years, and that most Jim Crow laws were in place in the North at that particular time. In the South, immediately after the end of slavery, most white southerners, especially the upper classes, were used to the presence and proximity of African Americans. House slaves were often treated well, almost like part of the family, or a favored pet, and many upper-class southern children were raised with the help of a ‘mammy’ or black nursery- maid. The races often mixed in the demi- monde, and the cohabitation of white men and black women were far from uncommon, and some areas even had spe...

    Read More

  • Claudette Colvin

    663 Words  | 2 Pages

    Claudette Colvin attended Booker T. Washington High School, where she was very studious. Claudette's family did not have enough money to afford a car, so she relied on the city's gold-and-green buses. On March 2, 1955 when Colvin was about 15 years of age, she was arrested for violation the local law. She refused to give up her seat to a group of white men that boarded the bus shortly after. She was on a bus called the Capital Heights, which was the same bus and the same year that Rosa Parks committed the same "crime" as Claudette only 9 months later. On this day, four white men got on the bus, and Claudette was sitting somewhere near the emergency exit. She was looking out the window when the white men stopped at her seat and said nothing. The bus driver ordered her to give up her seat to one of the men, and she ignored the order. She has given her seat up to white people before, but this is the day she was fed up with it. Claudette heard what the bus driver was saying, but she decided that day she was not giving up her seat to a white man just becau...

    Read More

  • Historical Methodology

    2024 Words  | 5 Pages

    The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Van Woodward, traces the history of race relations in the United States from the mid and late nineteenth century through the twentieth century. In doing so Woodward brings to light significant aspects of Reconstruction that remain unknown to many today. He argues that the races were not as separate many people believe until the Jim Crow laws. To set up such an argument, Woodward first outlines the relationship between Southern and Northern whites, and African Americans during the nineteenth century. He then breaks down the details of the injustice brought about by the Jim Crow laws, and outlines the transformation in American society from discrimination to Civil Rights. Woodward’s argument is very persuasive because he uses specific evidence to support his opinions and to connect his ideas. Considering the time period in which the book and its editions were written, it should be praised for its insight into and analysis of the most important social issue in American history.

    Read More

  • The Truth Behind the Bus

    1239 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Truth Behind the Bus There are many controversial issues concerning the bus service provided by Buena Vista University. BVU Rides, commonly known as the “Drunk Bus,” receives great reviews from the students using it at Buena Vista. However, members of the Storm Lake community are not as appreciative of this service. It is important, nonetheless, that people learn facts about BVU Rides in order to make an educated judgment. According to Behind the Arch, an essay compiled by students of Buena Vista University about the drinking issues within the university, citizens of Storm Lake feel that the “Drunk Bus” endorses drinking and drunkenness.

    Read More

  • Strength and Racism in 'The Secret Life of Bees'

    662 Words  | 2 Pages

    The segregation in South Carolina happens everywhere and every day. Indeed, racism is manifested through the media, the law, which legitimizes segregation, and the perceptions that white and black people have of each other. Because of the laws against colored people, Rosaleen, as a black woman, lives with constraints in her life. For example, she cannot live in a house with white people (Kidd, p.8), she cannot represent Lily at the charm school (Kidd, p.19), or even to travel with a car with white people (Kidd, p.76). The media is also influenced by racism, and constantly shows news about segregation such as the case of Martin Luther King, who is arrested because he wan...

    Read More

  • Jim Crow Laws

    847 Words  | 2 Pages

    "Civil Rights for Kids: Jim Crow Laws." Ducksters. Technological Solutions, Inc. (TSI), Apr. 2014. Web. 25 Apr. 2014. .

    Read More

More about The Bus Incident Case Study

Open Document