"On March 2, 1955, a 15-year-old Black high school junior named Claudette Colvin boarded a segregated city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, taking a window seat near the back. When the driver ordered her to give up her seat so a White woman could be more comfortable, Ms. Colvin - who had been studying Black history in class, learning about abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth - did not budge."
""History had me glued to the seat," she said later, recalling how it felt as though Tubman and Truth had their hands on her shoulders, giving her "the courage to remain seated." History would record that it was Rosa Parks, the longtime secretary of the local NAACP, who helped kick-start the modern civil rights movement by refusing to give up her seat on a crowded Montgomery bus."
"While Parks's stand proved far more consequential, leading to a year-long bus boycott that thrust the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence, Ms. Colvin's arrest inaugurated what King described as a pivotal period for Black people in Montgomery. Community leaders formed a committee to meet with city and bus company officials, calling for improved treatment for Black passengers. Those discussions proved fruitless, King recalled in a memoir, but "fear and apathy" gradually gave way to "a new spirit of courage and self-respect.""
On March 2, 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to relinquish her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus and was arrested after police dragged her off. Colvin had been studying Black history and later said figures like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth gave her courage. Her arrest preceded Rosa Parks's December defiance by nine months, and Colvin's case helped motivate adult activists and a committee seeking better treatment for Black passengers. Colvin served as a plaintiff and star witness in the federal lawsuit that ultimately overturned bus segregation. The episode contributed to a growing spirit of courage and the emergence of the Montgomery bus boycott.
Read at The Washington Post
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