I read this article on segregation, Rosa Parks is well known for her refusal to give up her seat to a
white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama in Dec. 1955. But
Parks' Civil Rights protest did have a precedent: 15-year-old Claudette
Colvin, a student from a black high school in Montgomery, had refused
to move from her bus seat nine months earlier. However Colvin is not
nearly as well known, and certainly not as celebrated, as Parks The bus incident. Montgomery
was segregated, which meant that black people couldn't use the dressing
rooms at department stores or ride in the front of the bus. Colvin
didn't like that."she knew that this was a double standard," she says."This was unfair." On March 2, 1955, Colvin got on the bus with three other students
who settled themselves in a middle row. The first 10 seats in the front
of the bus were for whites only. That was the law and Colvin knew it. "And
so as the bus proceeded on downtown, more white people got on the bus Eventually the bus got full capacity, and a young white lady
was standing near the four black girls. She was expecting them to get up."The bus driver saw the situation through the rear-view mirror and said 'I need those seats," says Phillip Hoose, the author of "Three of the girls got up and walked to the back of the bus. Claudette didn't."I just couldn't move," she says. "History had me glued to the seat."The bus driver called a police officer, who confronted Colvin."And she said 'I paid my fare and it's my constitutional right, they dragged her off bus because she refused to walk. They
handcuffed her and took me to an adult jail. She was charged with assault and battery, disorderly conduct and defying the segregation law. When Colvin got to school the following Monday, she got a mixed
reaction. Some students were impressed by her courage, while others felt
that she made things harder for them."Everything changed,"
she says. "I lost most of my friends. Their parents had told them to
stay away from me, because they said I was crazy, I was an extremist."Gray, who went on to represent civil rights icon like Rosa Parks and
Dr. Martin Luther King, says that Colvin is one of thousands of unnamed
individuals who played a very key role in civil rights history. "Well,
today, she is 75 years old. It's good to see some of the fruit of my
labor," says Colvin. "To me, I don't mind being named, as long as we
have someone out there to tell our story."
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