Nine months before Rosa Parks, There was a Young Woman names Claudette Colvin


On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat on a public bus. Parks' protest sparked the Montgomery bus protests and galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. Yet she was not the first African American individual in Montgomery to stand up against injustice in such a manner.

 On March 2, 1955, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was riding home on a city bus after a long day at school. A white passenger boarded, and the bus driver ordered Claudette to give up her seat. Claudette refused. As she later told Newsweek "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other. I was glued to my seat.”

Colvin was arrested for her civil disobedience and briefly put in jail. The NAACP and other civil rights groups considered rallying around Colvin's case in their campaign against Alabama's segregation laws before focusing efforts on Rosa Parks' protest nine months later. Nevertheless, Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in the landmark Browder v. Gayle case of 1956, which ruled that the segregation laws of Montgomery and Alabama state were unconstitutional. 

Claudette Colvin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudette_Colvin

DON'T FORGET TO RATE, COMMENT AND SUBSCRIBE
Join us on social media
Visit our website www.adaywithcrime.com

[email protected]
Cover Art created by Geneva McClam

Sound Mixing and editing by David McClam

Intro and outro jingle by David McClam