Claudette Colvin was arrested on March 2, 1955 because she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She became one of the four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle. Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist. She had refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama bus. I will be talking about these women and why they are important. Today is about Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks had refused to give her bus seat up to a white passenger on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama bus, which had spurred on the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott that had been launched nationwide to help efforts to end segregation of public facilities. The city had no choice but to lift the law that required segregation on public …show more content…
She had also refused to stand up on the bus to give up her seat for a white passenger. She had done this before Rosa Parks. She was a plaintiff in the landmark legal case Browder v. Gayle that helped the practice of segregation on Montgomery buses. She had grown up in the poorer neighborhoods. She mostly had A’s in her classes. On March 2, 1955 the bus driver had told her to move because of a white passenger. She said “It’s my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it’s my constitutional right.” Colvin was arrested on several charges, including violating the city’s segregation laws. For hours she sat there afraid “because you just don’t know what white people might do at that time.” Colvin had said that after her minister had paid her bail she went home and her and her family stayed up all night out of concern for possible retaliation. The NAACP briefly considered using Colvin’s case to challenge the segregation laws, but because of her age they decided against it and she also fell pregnant. Colvin was the first black women to ever do this she had set up big things that later many people had started