Hidden in Plain Sight: Black Female Leadership in the Montgomery Bus Boycott
This lesson brings forward the stories of Black women and girls whose activism and leadership were key to the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
School portrait of Claudette Colvin, aged 13, 1953.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
A civil rights activist, who, at the young age of 15, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. A member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council who knew and had been mentored by Rosa Parks, Colvin cited violation of her constitutional rights when she was arrested. The NAACP did not highlight Colvin’s arrest as the anchor to the Montgomery Bus Boycott because she was pregnant and unmarried. However, her arrest was highlighted when she was a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle.
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