Claudette Colvin did a revolutionary act nearly 10 months before Rosa Parks.
In March 1955, the 15-year-old was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a White person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
The teenager and others challenged the law in court. But civil rights leaders, pointing to circumstances in Colvin’s personal life, thought that Parks would be the better representative of the movement.
“People said I was crazy,” Colvin recently told CNN’s Abby Phillip. “Because I was 15 years old and defiant and shouting, ‘It’s my constitutional right!’ “
