Claudette Colvin

Black and white photograph of a Black teenager in glasses wearing a dark crew-neck sweater, smiling slightly at the camera, against a neutral background. It may be a yearbook photo.
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Black and white photograph of a Black teenager in glasses wearing a dark crew-neck sweater, smiling slightly at the camera, against a neutral background. It may be a yearbook photo.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

"On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus.... Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in the first federal court case filed by civil rights attorney Fred Gray on February 1, 1956, as Browder v. Gayle, to challenge bus segregation in the city. In a United States district court, Colvin testified before the three-judge panel that heard the case. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional."

Because Colvin was a teenage mother, her role in the story of Montgomery was downplayed in favor of Rosa Parks' (Parks being respectably married and an NAACP activist). She later moved to Detroit and New York, where she worked as a nurse's aide, and never quite forgave people for leaving her out of the history books. Colvin died yesterday at the age of 86. Rest in power.

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