I want to kick off Women’s History Month with Claudette Colvin who on March 2, 1955 refused to give up her seat to a white woman while riding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The school student refused to move to the back of the bus when ordered by the bus driver. Claudette’s defiance led to her arrest. She was charged with violating Montgomery’s segregation ordinance, disturbing the peace and assaulting a police officer.

Claudette was a member of the NAACP Youth Council but the civil rights organization did not want the rebellious teenager to be the face of the bus boycott. Respectability politics forced the 15-year-old to take a back seat to Rosa Parks who nine months later similarly refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.

Claudette was one of the four plaintiffs in the court case that challenged segregation on Alabama buses. The case, Browder v. Gayle, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which on November 13, 1956 ruled Alabama’s segregated bus system violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Improvement Association voted to end the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott on December 20, 1956.

Colvin was almost lost to history but she is getting her flowers.

Sixty-six years after her arrest, Colvin’s record was expunged. A Black man, Judge Calvin Williams, signed the order to seal and destroy her juvenile court records.

Thank you, Sister Claudette.