Civil rights pioneer seeks expungement of '55 arrest record

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By JAY REEVES

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Months before Rosa Parks became the mother of the modern civil rights movement by refusing to move to the back of a segregated Alabama bus, Black teenager Claudette Colvin did the same. Convicted of assaulting a police officer while being arrested, she was placed on probation yet never received notice that she’d finished the term and was on safe ground legally.

Now 82 and slowed by age, Colvin has asked a judge to end the matter once and for all. She wants a court in Montgomery to wipe away a record that her lawyer says has cast a shadow over the life of a largely unsung hero of the civil rights era.

“I am an old woman now. Having my records expunged will mean something to my grandchildren and great grandchildren. And it will mean something for other Black children,” Colvin said in a sworn statement.

Supporters sang civil rights anthems and clapped as Colvin entered the clerk’s office and filed the expungement request Tuesday. Her attorney, Phillip Ensler, said he was seeking all legal documents to be sealed and all records of the case erased.



Claudette Colvin, seated, watches as her attorney Gar Blume files paperwork in juvenile court to have her juvenile record expunged, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021, in Montgomery, Ala. Colvin was arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus in 1955. Behind Colvin wearing a red tie is Fred Gray, her original attorney from the civil rights era. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/racial-injustice-claudette-colvin-alabama-montgomery-5033ae0e30981c30202c432682e61024

[twin_ghost]

1. Aren't Juvenile records already sealed when you turn the age of majority?

[rurallib]

2. Colvin deserves to be considered among those exalted names of Civil Rights history

Thanks for posting this.