On March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

As police officers dragged her from the bus, she shouted again, and again, “It’s my constitutional right.” She was jailed and charged with violating segregation laws, disturbing the peace and assaulting a police officer. She pleaded not guilty, but was convicted.

Colvin’s act of protest happened 9 months before Rosa Parks famously sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, but Colvin’s age and lack of experience in the civil rights movement rendered her act of bravery and defiance all but forgotten in the telling of civil-rights history.

𝗪𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘂𝗽 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗵𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆.