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Wed, 03.02.1955

Black Teen Jailed for Bus Seating Violation

Claudette Colvin

*On this date in 1955, 15-year-old Black teenager Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to move out of her seat for a white woman on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

She violated the same Jim Crow segregation law that Rosa Parks encountered nine months later. Colvin was the first person to plead not guilty to such a charge. Her attorney, Fred Gray, raised constitutional issues in her defense, but she was convicted.

New Poem Each Day

Poetry Corner

I have sown beside all waters in my day. I planted deep, within my heart the fear That wind or fowl would take the grain away. A BLACK MAN TALKS OF REAPING by Arna Bontemps.
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