Who refused to give up her bus seat nine months before Rosa Parks?

On March 2, 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama—nine months before Rosa Parks made history with a similar act of defiance. Colvin was arrested and later became one of the plaintiffs in the landmark federal court case Browder v. Gayle, which led to the Supreme Court's decision ending bus segregation in Montgomery. Although Rosa Parks became the enduring symbol of the bus boycott, Colvin's courageous stand played a vital and often overlooked role in the Civil Rights Movement.