The Napkin In Between
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The Napkin In Between
The Untold Story of Courage, Change, and Claudette Colvin
HAPPY BLACK HISTORY MONTH!!! I don't know about y'all, but I wake up every day proud to be BLICKETY BLACK BLACK BLACK BLACK!!!
In honor of Black History Month, I'd like to take some time to shed light on people in black history who may have been forgotten. In today's episode, let's journey through the unsung heroism of Claudette Colvin, the young girl whose defiance against segregation laws preceded Rosa Parks’ famous protest. Despite facing the harsh reality of Jim Crow laws and an unjust legal system, her defiant spirit remained unyielding. This episode doesn't just stop at sharing her story but also reflects on the broader struggle for respect and recognition in the Black community. We'll tackle controversial actions surrounding Black History Month, DEI rollbacks, and celebrate the enduring strength and pride of being Black, all while honoring those who've paved the way before us. Join me in this tribute to resilience and legacy.
Is this thing on? Hello, hello, uh-oh, another yapper with a mic. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Napkin In Between Podcast. I'm your host, Daijné Jones, how's your week been? What's tea what's good. What have you been up to? Hope everyone has been having a great week.
Daijné:As I said in my last episode, I want to start doing this thing every week, called the peak of the week, where we talk about the joy that we found this past week, the things that made us smile, the things that centered us or grounded us or just helped us remain present in the chaos of everything that is the world right now. For me, the peak of my week was watching one of my favorite shows, which is Scandal. I'm re-watching Scandal. I've seen it before. I've watched this whole series, you know, from the beginning to the end. Every so often I'll pick an episode and you know re-watch that. But right now I'm re-watching the whole series and I'm watching it with my roommate, who has never seen it, so she's watching it for the first time. A part of me always wishes that I could erase my memory and go back and watch scandal for the first time, because it's just such a good show and, I think, the closest that I would ever get to. That is watching it with someone who has never seen it. Like I feel like, as we're watching it, I'm watching it, but I'm like watching her watch it. Do you know what I mean? Like I'm I know what's coming up, so I'll like look at her to see like how she reacts, if she's going to react how I reacted when I first saw that thing on Scandal and it's just so funny. It's like an out of body experience almost watching someone else watch one of your favorite shows. And my roommate and I are very similar and so like she's been reacting to things the way that I reacted to them when I first watched the show and it's just funny to see. It's funny to see someone else like enjoy something that is one of your favorite shows. Does that make sense? I don't know, but we just finished season two. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen Scandal, I'm so sorry it's been out for a minute. Like that's totally on you if you don't know what I'm talking about.
Daijné:But we just got to the end of season two and she just found out about Papa Pope, who is just fucking like one of the craziest characters in the whole series, and so it was like when Olivia was about to go on a run and she opened the door and all the presses outside trying to question her like are you the president's mistress, are you the person like, you know, whatever. And then she gets into the limo and he's like hello, Olivia, and she's like Dad. The gasp that left my roommate was so fucking funny and I remember like the first time I watched a show, being in that moment like I had the same visceral reaction of just being like jaw on the floor, flabbers, gasted, wind knocked out of me, like the craziest thing. But it's just so cool to watch a show with someone who has never seen it, like watching them watch it. It's just like so funny.
Daijné:So that's definitely been the peak of my week and I just love scandal. Shonda Rhimes is just again. I just love when black women like just so talented and the twists and the turns, and the one time in my life I feel like I've ever rooted for a republican, like what is going on like Fitz. Oh, I love him, I too, and it that's like the crazy thing. Shonda Rhimes makes you root for things that you would never root for, like rooting for a Republican, rooting for people who are cheating, like not feeling bad in the slightest for Millie while her husband is cheating on her, like girl, like Olivia and Fitz are dead, fucking wrong, dead fucking wrong. But I just I, I love them and I need to see them together and I need to see them making jam and moving to Vermont and it's just like this man is married, but like I don't care, like that's crazy. Scandal's a great show. If you haven't seen it, you're missing out. You need to go see it. But that's just been. The peak of my week of just is just re-watching scandal and watching it with my roommate.
Daijné:Another peak of my week, bitch, its Black History Month. I love being black. I love being black. I don't know what happens after you die, but if you, if you come back, if reincarnation is real in every single life, I want to be a black woman. Top tier, 10 out of out of 10, no notes. God really took his time. God has favorites and his favorite is a black woman. God is a black woman Like, oh, I just love being black, I love being a woman. I love being a black woman, like it's just everything and more to me. Honestly, I don't know. I just love being black. I love it all. I love everything about it. Happy black history month to my 92 percent and to my 80 percent and to my 92 percent 80 percent only if you know.
Daijné:You know, but I wanted to do a special thing for every episode for February, and actually one of these episodes is gonna go into March because I didn't plan it how I should have and so last week's episode came out in February. I just didn't realize that it was already February. I feel like January was extremely long, it was dragging and so like I didn't realize that it was finally fucking February, like shit. Why was January 3,000 years long For February,
Daijné:And what we're gonna talk about today, we are gonna talk about someone who I feel is a pivotal person in black history, but not only a pivotal person, someone who I feel like is a little bit forgotten or lost or you guys might not know a lot about. There are so many people who are pivotal parts of black history that I feel like not a lot of us know about, and it's people that I'm also learning about right now because I didn't even know about them. So the first person I want to talk about is Claudette Colvin. Claudette Colvin was a teenager in Montgomery, Alabama, who was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, nine months before Rosa Parks was arrested for the exact same thing refusing to give up her seat. So on March 2nd 1955, Claudette was coming home from public school. She was in a segregated school in Alabama it was the Booker T Washington School, and she would take public transportation to and from school because her family didn't have a car.
Daijné:So she gets on the bus coming home from school with three classmates and they're sitting in the colored only part of the bus, because in that time in the south Jim Crow Laws and segregation, there were white only and colors only. You know, know, drinking fountains, restaurants, public places like that, and then on the bus there was a white only section and a coloreds only section where obviously the white people sat in the front. Something that I didn't know is that bus drivers had the ability to move the whites only sign on buses, and so If the section that was deemed whites only was full and other white people got on the bus, then the bus driver could move the sign back and then make part of what would be the colors only part of the bus. It now would be for white people to sit down as well. So a white woman gets on the bus, all the seats in the white only section are already full, and so the bus driver moves the sign back and is like OK, you, you four, Claudette and um, three of her classmates. They were like you four need to to move. And so her three classmates immediately, you know, agreed they get up and they, they moved back.
Daijné:Claudette sat in her seat and at the time that she had decided to sit in her seat, she was also in school. They were learning about the civil rights movement and black history, and so in an interview years later, when they were talking about the situation, you know, Claudette said that she felt like she had Harriet Tubman pushing down on one side of her shoulder and then Sojourner Truth was pushing down the other shoulder, and she said that she felt like she was glued in her seat and she could not move because history was keeping her seated, and so she refuses to give up her seat and the bus driver is like why aren't you moving? Like this woman wants to sit down.
Daijné:And and the thing was the row that they were sitting in. The woman could have sat down, but she would have been sitting in the same row as Claudette. And she didn't want to do that because at the time, if you were seated in the same row as a black person, it meant that y'all were on the same level. And in the South, even still today I don't know why I'm speaking as though this is like not a thing anymore white people will view themselves as superior to black people and other people of color. And so she didn't wanna sit in the row with Claudette. She wanted Claudette to get up and move so that she was not on the same level. So much for separate but equal right any fucking way.
Daijné:So Claudette's refusing to move. She's like I'm not giving up my seat. She says it's a violation of her constitutional rights. When the bus driver asks her why she won't move, she just says it's a violation of my constitutional rights, I'm not moving. And so the bus driver's like well, if you don't move, you know I'm going to call the police. And Claudette said call the po-po-ho. Like I don't give a fuck, I'm paraphrasing. Obviously she didn't say that, but she was like okay, call the police then. So bus driver calls the police and as she's being handcuffed and dragged off the bus and, you know, put in the police car, she's just continuing to say, like this is a violation of my constitutional rights, this is a violation of my constitutional rights.
Daijné:So on the ride down to the police station the officers were sexually harassing Claudette while she was in the police car. They're making comments about her body, you know, trying to guess her her bra size. She even said that you know, one of the officers sat in the back of the police car with her, which really scared her because she was worried that she would be sexually assaulted. And so they take her to jail and she is charged with disorderly conduct, violating segregation laws and assaulting a police officer. They also said that during the arrest she was like clawing at them and kicking them, which none of that happened. They were just tacking on charges because she refused to give up her seat. A minister from her church bails her out and she's put on trial. She's represented by Fred Gray, who was a well-known um civil rights lawyer at the time, and she is found guilty of all three charges. There was an appeal to her case a couple months later, in May of 1955 and two of her charges the disorderly conduct and violating segregation laws. Those two charges were dropped but the assaulting a police officer still stood and she had that on her record until 2021 when a federal judge in Alabama expunged her record.
Daijné:So if you're like me, you're kind of wondering like why is her story not as widely known or told? Why don't we learn about her? In you know the civil rights movement? And ultimately it came down to her not being an appealing protester. Claudette refusing to give up her seat wasn't like a random act or just something that she had decided to do that day. She wanted to get into activism. She, like I said, was learning about you know black history and the civil rights movement in school and she had hopes to one day be president of the United States and she wanted to get into activism.
Daijné:One of the things that really ignited her fire of wanting to get into activism was the case of Jeremiah Reeves. If you're unfamiliar with that case, it was a 16 year old boy who was accused of raping a white woman. He held that it was consensual sex between him and this woman. They were caught having sex. The white woman cried rape. He was tried and executed for raping a white woman. The case of Jeremiah Rueeves was in 1952. And so Claudette had been learning about the case and following it and that's kind of what ignited her fire to want to be an activist for civil rights.
Daijné:But ultimately she was not seen as an appealing protester. You know, civil rights leaders had to carefully pick who they made the face of their protests in order to be taken seriously. And Claudette was a teenager, she was dark-skinned, she didn't have quote-unquote good hair and she was pregnant. And so if they would have made her the face of the Montgomery bus boycott, they would have ripped her to shreds they meaning white people they would have not taken her seriously, they would have vilified her, which I'm sure they still did with Rosa Parks, you know, even though she fit the mold more than Claudette. I'm sure they did the exact same thing to Rosa Parks.
Daijné:But for a girl like Claudette, a teenager, dark-skinned, quote-unquote unruly, not good hair and pregnant, had she been the face of the Montgomery bus boycott, you know, they just would not have even given it the time of day, they wouldn't have paid the attention to it that they did when Rosa Parks was the face of it, and even in an interview. You know, because nine months after Claudette refused to give up her seat is when Rosa Parks ended up refusing to give up her seat, and in an interview Claudette said that her mom told her to just let Rosa Parks have it, to let Rosa Parks be the face of the movement, because the way that Claudette's mom explained it to her is that white people already liked Rosa Parks. She was the secretary of the city's chapter of the NAACP. She was fair-skinned, she had quote-unquote good hair. You know she was this woman that they had essentially given some respect to. Obviously she's still a black woman, so the respect was very slim, but she was in a more respected position than Claudette and like.
Daijné:Thinking about that makes my fucking blood boil. Like all black people wanted was to be treated with respect and to not be like demeaned or look like, looked at as less than or just want to just respect. You know what I mean. Even today, we thought we have to pick and choose who we make the face of things, because if you don't fit you know this certain criteria, they're not going to give you the time of day, they're not going to listen to you or you know anything.
Daijné:It's just the most ridiculous thing, and so you know Claudette says that. You know she doesn't feel slighted in any way. She like, understands, and she feels like what Rosa Parks did still helped. So at the end of the day, it's like we got to where we wanted to be, but it's just like it's disgusting that. You know we even have to do that. We have to pick and choose and carefully craft who we make the face of different movements in order for those movements to be taken seriously.
Daijné:But that's why her story and the activism that she did kind of gets lost in history and people may not know her name or know what she did, because essentially, she wasn't the perfect victim. It's so crazy that in so many situations with black people wanting rights, with women wanting to not be sexually assaulted, if you are not viewed as the perfect victim, people will pick you apart and villainize you and make you the bad guy, simply because you just want respect or you want civil fucking rights, like oh anyway. But, like I said, Claudette had this on her record, assaulting a police officer. From this arrest until 2021, she's still alive today. Mind you, she's 88 years old.
Daijné:In 2021, a federal judge in Alabama expunged her record and, as I was doing research on her. She's like the cutest woman in the world, like oh, she's so cute. But in one of her interviews, you know, they surprised her and she got to meet the judge who expunged her record and she was literally like a little schoolgirl, like she was so giddy to meet him and so happy and you could just tell that you know she was just tired. She was tired of being looked at as subhuman and felt like she was being walked all over and she was standing up for what she believed in and she's just so freaking cute. But I got so emotional watching them meet because he was thanking her and telling her like I'm a product of your activism because obviously at the time when she was arrested there were no black judges and 60 some years later a black federal judge in Alabama was able to expunge her record. She was like she started crying and I know that it was just like the most amazing full circle moment for her.
Daijné:Like that is why I did what I did, just for for better, for not even myself, because at the time again, she kind of had to stay back from the spotlight of it all, because if she was the face of the movement. You know she would have been villainized and they wouldn't have been taken as seriously and different things like that. So she didn't even she did it for her, obviously, but I think she had this bigger picture if she was doing it for future generations as well, and that's why I want to give flowers to these people who I feel like might have been forgotten or less known in black history, because they genuinely did it for us so that we could have, you know, better lives and respect and just basic civil fucking rights, and so I just wanted to bring more light to Claudette and her activism and so that more people know her name. As a community, it's always been us who looks out for us, and I'm so appreciative of the people who have come before me and fought for their rights, but also my rights, and just wanted better better for for themselves, better for future generations and just did the work, and I'm just really appreciative of all that they did. That's the reason.
Daijné:I know that you know, with all the crazy shit going on in the world right now, with Trump and everything, at the end of everything, the black community is going to be okay. This is something that we're not new to this. We're true to this. You know what I mean. This is we've always had to figure out a way to be resilient and fight through hardships, and so I know that, at the end of everything, black people are going to be okay. We're going to figure it out, we're going to roll with the punches and and as a community, we will be okay. To all you other communities, y'all, stay safe thoughts and prayers, tariffs as well but I just know that at the end of the day, the black community is going to be fine, and that's why I'm just so happy to be black. I just love being black and literally like thinking about it. Just it just makes me so happy. I just love being black. It's literally top tier, 10 out of 10, no notes. I love it.
Daijné:And this fuckery with Donald Trump declaring February black history month like what type of shit are you on, bro? Like be so fucking for real. I saw something where he talked about some. He's proclaiming black February to be the national black history month. Like, sir, what do you think we've been doing for this entire time? It's giving you want to take away, you know, our opportunities with the rollback of DEI. Mind you, the people who benefit most from DEI are white women, the Latino community, the Asian community, the LGBTQIA+ community. Like I saw this thing and it was like seven different communities and like the eighth community that benefits from DEI was black people. Like they want to pretend like it's for us. . We knew that. You know we're not the people who are benefiting the most from DEI anyway. But it's giving you want to take away our opportunities. But you know, give us a month. Mind you, we've already been celebrating it this month. Like please be so, fucking for real. Like shut the fuck up.
Daijné:But I just wanted to say happy black history month to everybody. Thank you, you, thank you to everyone, past, present and future, who has fought for our rights and our liberties and our freedoms. And thank you to Claudette, because I'm also wondering, like did they get the idea for the Montgomery bus boycott from her? You know what I mean. Or was that something that they had already had in mind? I don't know, this is just speculation, but like, maybe it did come from her, maybe they saw her do that and we're like, okay, we can't use her because they'll villainize her and they won't take her seriously, but we can take this idea and turn it into something you know bigger. And thus was born Rosa Parks. And you know the Montgomery bus boycott and everything like that. So I don't know, just speculation. I I don't know if that's how it happened, but regardless, I just wanted to give Claudette Colvin her flowers because she is deserving of them and I feel like more people should know her name. I just love being black and I love being a woman and I love being black woman. Okay, I'm done talking.
Daijné:I hope that this episode was educational and helpful. I'm really excited to bring light to more people who may have been forgotten or are less well known in black American history. If anyone has any recommendations for someone that we should talk about on the pod for these next upcoming weeks, please leave it in the comments, email it to me, DM me. I just want to give flowers to the people who I feel like may have been forgotten or are less known, who were extremely important in black history, and to us having the freedoms and liberties that we do today. So thank you, guys. So much for tuning into today's episode. I hope everyone's having a good day, except for that orange drink lady, and I will see you in the next episode. Peace and love. Talk to you later. The Napkin In Between, hosted by Daijné Jones, produced by Daijné Jones, post-production by Daijné Jones, music by Sam Champagne and graphics by Isma Vidal. Don't forget to like and subscribe. See you next episode.