Do you know who Claudette Colvin was? A 15 year old hero in the civil rights movement. [View all]

[pnwmom]

Fearless teens have always been at the forefront of social change.

Nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, Claudette refused to give hers up. She got herself arrested and dragged off the bus in handcuffs. We should all honor her as much as we honor Rosa Parks. She was so young and yet so strong.

Like the young protesters today.

https://www.npr.org/2009/03/15/101719889/before-rosa-parks-there-was-claudette-colvin

The bus driver ordered her to get up and she refused, saying she'd paid her fare and it was her constitutional right. Two police officers put her in handcuffs and arrested her. Her school books went flying off her lap.

"All I remember is that I was not going to walk off the bus voluntarily," Colvin says.

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He also believes Colvin is important because she challenged the law in court, one of four women plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the court case that successfully overturned bus segregation laws in Montgomery and Alabama.

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When asked why she is little known and why everyone thinks only of Rosa Parks, Colvin says the NAACP and all the other black organizations felt Parks would be a good icon because "she was an adult. They didn't think teenagers would be reliable."

She also says Parks had the right hair and the right look.

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