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Claudette Colvin

Back in the day on, March 2nd, 1955, a fifteen-year old African-American girl refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Claudette Colvin had been making her way home from school when she acted in defiance nine months before civil rights icon Rosa Parks had undertaken the very same historic task. As Colvin herself noted, she had given up her seat on previous occasions but recent history lessons about Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth emboldened her resolve. The teenager was not to become the icon of the struggle over desegregation, however, as organizers mulled over the issue following her arrest. Some felt she was too young and too poor to elicit the sympathies of whites. When Colvin later became pregnant by an older married man, organizers effectively abandoned the notion altogether.

But as the Reverend who bailed Colvin out of jail told her, “Everyone prays for freedom. We’ve all been praying and praying. But you’re different—you want your answer the next morning. And I think you just brought the revolution to Montgomery.”

For Uprising, this is your truth professa’ saying it’s no mystery why they conceal our people’s history