Today’s the birthday of Claudette Colvin (September 5, 1939).
On March 2, 1955, she was the first person arrested for resisting bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks. At the time, Claudette was a high school student who’d been studying civil rights in school and had just finished a paper about discriminatory practices in Montgomery.
When told to move to the back of the bus to make room for a white passenger, she refused. When asked about it later, she said, "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.“
She was arrested and the community rallied behind her. When she got pregnant shortly after, though, they were afraid that an unwed teen mother would not make the best public representative for their cause. But when the case against bus segregation was taken to the Supreme Court, she was one of the five women listed as plaintiffs. It was this court case that ended bus segregation in Alabama.
Never forget ✊🏻
