Claudette Colvin Read Online Free

time I saw her she was dead.
    After that, I began to question everything: I asked God why He didn’t answer my prayers. I asked, “Why would You take my sister? Why did You say no when I asked for my sister’s deliverance?” My mom disagreed with my thinking. She said, “You prayed for Delphine’s deliverance? Well, let me tell you what I was prayin’ for: I was praying for God to take her, because I didn’t want the Devil to have the upper hand. I didn’t want her to be paralyzed for the rest of her life.” I said, “Mom, I would have taken care of her. I would have gone to school to be a nurse and learned to take care of her.” I would’ve, too.
    Delphine died September 5, 1952. It was my thirteenth birthday.
    ST. JUDE HOSPITAL IN MONTGOMERY
    To many blacks, the hospital where Delphine was treated was an island of kindness. St. Jude opened in 1951 as the first racially integrated hospital in the Southeast. It provided health, education, and social services to all comers, black or white. Its founder, Father Harold Purcell, was loved by many blacks. “St. Jude’s was clean and easy to get to,” remembers Claudette. “Father Purcell refused to put up White and Colored signs anywhere in or around the hospital, no matter what anyone said.”

    Hot comb and hair-straightening products typical of the 1950s, when Claudette attended Booker T. Washington High School

CHAPTER THREE
“W E S EEMED TO H ATE O URSELVES ”
    â€œRadical” simply means “grasping things at the root
.”
    â€”Angela Davis
    C LAUDETTE LEFT HER HOUSE on the first day of high school determined to put her mind on her studies. Delphine’s funeral—just two weeks before—had been as sad and bewildering a day as she could remember, but now she hoped she could put it behind her. Now it was time to focus.
    Booker T. Washington High, whose sports teams were known as the Yellow Jackets, was one of Montgomery’s two public high schools for black students, the other being George Washington Carver High. Almost all the sons and daughters of Montgomery’s working-class black families went to either Washington or Carver, with a few Catholic students attending St. Jude’s and many of the children of Montgomery’s black professionals enrolled at other private schools.
    Booker T. Washington High was a buff-colored, three-story brick citadel. The glass in the lower windows was painted white so students couldn’t look out at the street. Desktops were gouged and book covers cracked. Pages were torn from years of use. There was so little money from city funds that each year the principal put on a fund-raising event to buy desks, books, and equipment for the cafeteria. In the fall of 1952, the air around the building was thick with the dust of construction, as workersraced to complete a new wing to the school before winter in an effort to keep up with Montgomery’s expanding black population.

    Claudette in 1952, age twelve
    Though being smart was an asset, Claudette soon found that having light skin and straight hair was the surest key to popularity at Booker T. Washington. Many girls woke up early and spent hours applying hot combs to their hair, trying to straighten it to look, as some said, “almost white.” But Claudette’s hair wouldn’t stay straight or flat no matter how long she pressed it, and her skin was very dark. On top of that, she was from King Hill, a neighborhood she loved but others scorned. And no matter how hard she fought it, Delphine’s death had left her feeling raw and lonely, especially when she passed the spot each day where her sister had always waited for her after school. Suddenly alone, Claudette started life as a Yellow Jacket feeling she was at the very bottom of the social heap.

    C LAUDETTE : Right after Delphine died, I became very sensitive. Just about any cruel word or insult could start me crying,