28 Days Of Black History: Claudette Colvin
Feb 24, 2021
#BlackHistoryMonth
Claudette Colvin (American Activist)
There was another woman before Rosa Parks that refused to give up her seat. Claudette Colvin got her chance on March 2, 1955, when she got on a bus in downtown Montgomery. She and three other Black students were told to give up their seats for a white woman. Colvin refused, and she was arrested and eventually put on indefinite probation. Though Colvin’s courageous act occurred nine months before Rosa Parks did the same thing, the NAACP chose to use the 42-year-old civil rights activist as the public face of the Montgomery bus boycott, as they believed an “unwed mother” Colvin became pregnant when she was 16 would not be the best face for the movement. She rarely talked about her heroic actions until the 1990s
