BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WSFA) – People from all over the country gathered in Birmingham on Saturday to honor the life and legacy of Claudette Colvin, an overlooked pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement whose act of defiance preceded Rosa Parks’ famous protest by nine months.
Colvin, who passed away January 13th, refused to surrender her bus seat to a white woman on March 2, 1955, in Montgomery.
At just 15 years old, her act of civil disobedience led to her arrest and later made her one of four plaintiffs in a landmark desegregation case that would ultimately declare Alabama’s bus segregation laws unconstitutional…