Claudette Colvin

And I actually think he didn't do anything wrong by insisting on an America.

And then of course, in 1955, those black women, Claudette Colvin and Susie McDonald and Aurelia Browder and Mary Louise Smith and ultimately Rosa Parks, they said no, but what they really were saying is I'm going to push this country to be greater.

And I think they were great Americans and they gave birth to a civil rights movement that was sustained by great Americans, black and white, young and old, who pushed this country to do something better, stronger.

And we became a more robust, healthy democracy in 1965 after the Voting Rights Act has passed.

Folks like Harriet Tubman, Mary Church Terrell, Ida B.

Wells, Rosa Parks, Claudette Colvin, Zora Neale Hurston, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Daisy Bates, the list goes on and on.

But that work didn't end with the Civil Rights Movement.

Black women continued to lead this fight even when they weren't at the center of attention.

Till, a Chicago teenager, had gone to Mississippi to stay with relatives and was murdered for supposedly interacting with a white woman.

In March of nineteen fifty-five, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was handcuffed and dragged off a city bus for refusing to give up her seat.

And in October of that year, eighteen-year-old Mary Louise Smith was arrested for the same offense.

The Woman's Political Council, led by Alabama State College professor Jo Ann Robinson, had been lobbying city commissioners since nineteen fifty-four to end bus segregation and driver harassment.

Early in Chief Justice Earl Warren's tenure, the court had already established itself as favoring the expansion of civil rights.

Led by counsel and Montgomery local Fred Gray, the boycott organizers bypassed local courts, which were certain to rule against them, and filed Browder v. Gayle, a federal lawsuit challenging Montgomery's bus segregation under the 14th Amendment.

The case addressed the humiliation bus passengers Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith experienced under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The defense of segregation relied on the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, which allowed separate facilities as long as they were deemed equal.

In 1955, the year that would finally see the start of the bus boycott, several Black women were arrested for defying discrimination on the buses.

In March, a 15-year-old high school student named Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat for a white rider, declaring it was her constitutional right to keep her seat.

She was arrested.

The next month, a 37-year-old rider named Aurelia Browder was arrested in a similar case.

After the bombing of their house, several white supporters, some friends and some strangers, came to check on the King family's welfare.

Around this time, two lawyers filed a legal challenge to the Alabama and Montgomery bus segregation laws in federal district court.

The plaintiffs were several black women, including Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, and Mary Louise Smith.

The next effort to quell the bus protest once and for all was a wave of arrests based on an all-but-forgotten state law banning boycotts.

She refused to give up her seat on the bus nine months before Rosa Parks, and you've probably never heard of her.

This is Badass Black History: Claudette Colvin Edition.

On March 2nd, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin boarded a city bus after school.

Claudette was sitting in a middle row near an emergency exit when the bus became crowded, so crowded that white people were forced to stand and couldn't find a seat, and Jim Crow protocol stated that Black people towards the middle or the front would have to give up their seat to the white people.

Claudette said no.

Black leaders also thought that Rosa would be a better case test for integration because she was an adult who had a job and would be better able to handle it.

Claudette says she wasn't angry that she didn't get more recognition, just disappointed.

Claudette Colvin died in hospice care on January 13th, 2026 at the age of 86.

And this is actually nine months before Rosa Parks does the same thing.

Now, why do we know about Rosa Parks that we don't know about Claudette Colvin? She's gained more prominence in the last handful of years.

Actually, Claudette Colbin literally just died.

Yes.

History is not that long ago, right? She lived until very recently.

Right.

But why do we know Rosa Parks that we don't know Claudette Colvin? It's because she was told she was not right for the job.

She was not right for the job of being the face of the civil rights movement.

She's a great American for resisting bigotry.

In 1955, those five black women, Claudette Colvin, the 15 year old, and Susie McDonald, and Aurelia Browder, and Mary Louise Smith, and ultimately Rosa Parks, they said no, but they didn't just say no, they said, we're going to push this country.

And I think they were great Americans for doing that.

The civil rights leaders, 50,000 black people in Montgomery who stayed off the buses for 382 days, 50,000 black, every black person in the city stayed off the bus For 382 days and I love the stories that we're seeing now because we've done this site This older black man was being questioned by a journalist when the bus came by and the journalist said why don't you get on that bus? And and the older black man told the journalist he said well jim crow is on that bus when jim crow gets off i'll get on and I now I now realize they were great Americans.

It was Wednesday, March 2, 1955.

School had just let out in Montgomery, Alabama, when 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was riding the city bus home with three of her friends.

They had found four seats together about halfway down the bus.

Claudette sat beside the window.

But she had already made her decision.

She was staying right where she was.

See, Claudette Colvin grew up in Montgomery during a time when the color of your skin could decide where you lived, where you went to school, which door you entered, even where you were allowed to sit.

These rules were called segregation.

them.

I mean, Claudette Colvin, I think, is the best story that we ever found ever.

Little girl, 14, who did what Rosa Parks did one year prior that inspired Rosa Parks.

And it was just one of those stories that is just so beautiful, passionate.