Claudette Colvin: Teenaged Civil Rights Activist

Too tired to give up her seat on the bus home from high school, on March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin refused to move for a white passenger—nine months before Rosa Parks would do the same. Later she said that she felt inspired by the memories of earlier pioneers to stand—or sit—her ground. As she told Newsweek, “I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, ‘Sit down girl!’ I was glued to my seat.”

The 15-year-old Colvin was arrested for violating Montgomery, Alabama’s segregation laws, and her family feared for their safety as news of the incident spread. Colvin pled not guilty, and was given probation. While Colvin wasn’t selected by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to challenge segregation laws in the south due to her youth, she later became one of the four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that the Montgomery segregated bus system was unconstitutional.