Black history’s heroes: Claudette Colvin

Many people know Rosa Parks as a civil rights icon who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger and move to the back of the bus. Parks’s action led to the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott.

What most people don’t know is that nine months before Parks, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin did the same exact thing. Colvin’s act of heroic defiance would forever change American society, even though she is relatively unknown. Moreover, while Parks received the attention and place in history for refusing to give up her seat, Colvin was actually the litigant who got bus segregation laws thrown out.