Claudette Colvin...
No one talks about who did it first and inspired the NAACP to do a publicity stunt in which Rosa Parks did it.
Claudette Colvin is a civil rights activist who, before Rosa Parks, refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She was arrested and became one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional. Colvin later moved to New York City and worked as a nurse's aide. She retired in 2004.
Claudette Colvin was so important to the movement but so few people know who she is. Rosa Parks did what she did because Claudette was pregnant and unmarried at the time. The activists who were promoting her case thought that her circumstances would be used to discredit her, and they were almost certainly right. A pregnant unmarried teen would be dragged through the mud today, let alone 1955.
It's so wild that people think that the Civil Rights era was so removed from us. Claudette Colvin is still alive. She was only around 65 in 2004. I was a child in 2004. My mom is only 10 years younger than her. A lot of the people who fought for our rights are still living today. So are the people who tried to stop them.
