Colvin was fifteen years old. She was from a poor family. She was, by the accounts of those who knew her, outspoken and passionate in ways that some adults in the community thought might be characterized as unstable or aggressive. Her skin was dark — a factor that multiple accounts note in the context of the colorism that operated within Black communities as well as in white perceptions of Black individuals. She did not present the image of composed, middle-class Black respectability that the leadership believed the test case required.
And then, sometime after the March 2 arrest and before the federal lawsuit was filed, she became pregnant.
Colvin was not pregnant at the time of her arrest — this is a factual point that multiple sources confirm and that the prompt for this article specifically identifies as requiring clarity. The pregnancy came later. But by the time the community leadership was deciding who would be the central plaintiff in a public challenge to bus segregation, the pregnancy was known. The father of her son, Raymond, was reportedly a married man significantly older than Colvin. She gave birth in March 1956.
The pregnancy became the stated reason — or one of the reasons — that civil rights leaders told themselves and others for not elevating Colvin’s case as the primary public vehicle for the bus challenge. To put a young unmarried Black teenager who was pregnant by a married man at the center of a constitutional challenge to racial segregation in 1950s Alabama was, in the leadership’s judgment, to hand the opposition a weapon they would use effectively. The personal circumstances would become the story, crowding out the constitutional argument.