Before Rosa Parks there was Claudette Colvin, an American pioneer of the civil rights movement during the 1950’s. Nine months before activist Rosa Parks famous incident, 15 year old Claudette Colvin was the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat to a white person. At the time Colvin was one of the four women to challenge bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama.
For years Montgomery’s black leaders did not publicize Colvin’s case, and eventually her case was dropped by civil rights campaigners due to her being pregnant and unmarried during the time. Colvin has told the NAACP that the civil rights organizations saw Rosa Parks as a good figure due to her being an adult and “reliable and most appealing.”
Colvin was not the only women left out in the Civil Rights Movement many others had been left out as well. However she does not mind that Rosa Parks is known for the boycott, but she would like for the world to know that the attorneys took four women to the Supreme Court to directly challenge the law that eventually led to the end of segregation.