Facts Left Out of History

Sometimes the most interesting information gets lost on the cutting-room floor of time

Sometimes the most interesting information gets lost on the cuttingroom floor of time.

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ROSA PARKS WAS NOT THE FIRST WOMAN TO DEFY RACIST BUS LAWS In 1955, a young woman in Montgomery, Alabama, caused a stir when she refused to give her bus seat to a White passenger. She was the first person arrested for protesting Montgomery’s racist busing rule, and her defiance eventually became the subject of international attention. That woman was named Claudette Colvin. Actually, she was just a girl—15 years old.

Of course, it is Rosa Parks (left) who

went down in history for defying the Jim Crow laws in the same way later that year. (For the record, it’s a popular misconception that both women were arrested for sitting in “Whites only” sections.) Colvin knew Parks from an NAACP youth group, and she also knew that Parks was the better person to be a figurehead in their city’s growing protest movement. Parks had done prior work with the NAACP, and “the organization didn’t want a teenager in the role,” Colvin explains.