February 26th, 2021

Claudette Colvin is an activist, trailblazer, and was a pioneer in the civil rights movement in Alabama during the 1950s.

Nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, Colvin did the same thing at the same place.

On March 2, 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was sitting on a full bus in Montgomery, Alabama, when the driver asked her and three other black students to move so a white woman could sit. The other three students moved to the back, however, Colvin refused saying, "It's my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it's my constitutional right."

She was the first person to give up her seat during the Jim Crow Era. Colvin was not publicly recognized for this pioneering effort at the time, because leaders of the civil rights movement gave more publicity to more appealing protesters.

It was not until 2019 when Alexandra Ocasio publicly thanked her courageous attempts that the world began to hear about her story and she’s been recognized as a leader of this movement. This raised the conversation about who gets to represent a movement or who's the "appropriate" spokesperson for the Black community’s fight for basic civil rights.