Claudette Colvin

The first ever person arrested for protesting against bus segregation in Alabama, Claudette Colvin is an African-American civil rights activist who dared to question the discrimination faced by blacks from a young age. Growing up in a poor neighborhood, she had witnessed several accounts of racism and discrimination not only at the hands of the whites, but also at the hands of members of her very own black African-American community. For some reasons most Americans in the mid-19th century still held on to the prejudiced belief that lighter skinned people were superior. And Claudette is not just black, but has a darker shade of black, and thus discrimination was not alien to her. But she was not someone who would give up on her rights to social equality. Brave and gutsy from an early age, she became the first person to protest against segregation in buses in Alabama when she was just a teenaged schoolgirl. She was charged for failing to comply with the segregation rules and pleaded not guilty. This was the first time a black woman had publicly stood up against the practice of bus segregation. However, her pioneering efforts never received wide-spread recognition or approval from the community due to her age and certain social factors.