Claudette Colvin: First Person To Protest On The Bus

Gantt Torres

Mr. Miller

English I

8 December 2017

Claudette Colvin

Did you know that Rosa Parks was not the first person to protest on a bus? There were many other people who protested too. Claudette Colvin was an African-American teenager who sat in the front of a bus where only white people were supposed to sit; but her civil rights protest actually happened nine months before the more famous protest of Rosa Parks, which led to the end of segregation. Unfortunately, Claudette Colvin will not be remembered for being the first one to sit in the front of the bus and to this day, she remains disappointed for not getting enough credit for her protest (Mullins).

Born in 1939, Claudette Colvin grew up in a very poor neighborhood in Montgomery, Alabama (Biography). In the 1950s, the city of Montgomery was segregated, and Claudette went to a segregated school (Adler). There she learned about African-American leaders. She was a very good student, got mostly A’s and even wanted to become president one day (Biography). She rode the public bus system to school,; however, she was not able to sit at the front of the bus since it was for

She refused, saying that it was her constitutional right to sit there and that she had paid her fare (Biography). Two police officers got on the bus, talked with the bus driver to see what was going on and then also confronted Colvin (Abdul-Aleem). Despite her protests, the police officers shoved her books off of her lap, handcuffed her, physically threw her off of the bus, and took her to jail (Abdul-Aleem). Even though others had refused to give up their seats to white riders too, Claudette wanted to get a lawyer and fight this segregation (Radio Diaries). Claudette and three other teenagers challenged the city of Montgomery about segregation and their civil rights being violated