In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks defied segregation laws by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin did exactly the same thing. Eclipsed by Parks, her act of defiance was largely ignored for many years. She herself didn't talk about it much, but she spoke recently to the BBC.
"There was segregation everywhere. The churches, buses and schools were all segregated and you couldn't even go into the same restaurants," Claudette Colvin says.
"I remember during Easter one year, I was to get a pair of black patent shoes but you could only get them from the white stores, so my mother drew the outline of my feet on a brown paper bag in order to get the closest size, because we weren't allowed to go in the store to try them on."
Going to a segregated school had one advantage, she found - her teachers gave her a good grounding in black history.
"We learned about negro spirituals and recited poems but my social studies teachers went into more detail," she says.
Source : bbc
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