I'd like my grandchildren to be able to see that their grandmother stood up for something a long time ago.

Those are important words for those of you wondering how to plan your day.

Those words were spoken by a woman named Claudette Colvin.

Claudette passed away on January 13th

of this year, having left the world much as she lived her life, quietly, humbly, and without fanfare.

But in 1955, Clonette Colvin stood up, or rather, she remained seated, in a choice that

would alter the course of American history. At the time,

she was a young black girl from a working class family, and as class as much as her race plays a

role in why people don't know her story. But neither her social status nor her race diminished

her courage, her impact, or her legacy. American democracy is today stronger because she

chose to act, or in the words of the historian

Timothy Snyder, she chose to not obey an unjust system.

Nine months before Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a

Montgomery-Alabama municipal bus, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was returning home from school one

March afternoon and boarded a Montgomery City bus. Like any other day, she sat in the neutral zone,

the middle section from where, as the bus filled up, the driver could order black passengers

to move to the back. But unlike any other day, Clodette made a choice that March

2nd. She simply would not give up her seat. At the intersection of Bibb and Commerce streets in Montgomery,

predictably the bus started to fill up with white people, and the driver, as he would do every

day, instructed several black passengers, including Claudette Colvin, to give up their seats.

All of them but one complied. Clodette Colvin stayed seated, and seated she would remain.

Two police officers were called in. Nevertheless, she persisted in her personal and at the time

...