The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, From the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement

Rosa Parks is generally regarded as the “catalyst” of the civil rights movement, but while she did play an important role, she wasn’t the first to challenge Montgomery’s segregated public buses. In 1955, nine months before Rosa refused to give up her seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was riding the bus home from school with her friends. They sat in the section for Black passengers, but the bus soon filled up, and the bus driver called for Claudette and her classmates to stand to make way for white passengers. Claudette’s classmates stood, but she stayed seated, feeling as if the hands of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were holding her down.

As a child, Claudette had always sharply felt the injustice of segregation and discrimination, and incidents throughout her adolescence increased her sense that some change must be made. In high school, one of her classmates was accused of raping a white woman. Sixteen-year-old Jeremiah Reeves was dragged to jail and placed in the electric chair, which officers threatened to turn on if he didn’t confess. Jeremiah’s relationship with the woman was consensual, but he confessed to rape out of fear.