azspot:

When Rosa Parks refused on the afternoon of Dec. 1, 1955, to give up her bus seat so that a white man could sit, it is unlikely that she fully realized the forces she had set into motion and the controversy that would soon swirl around her. Other black women had similarly refused to give up their seats on public buses and had even been arrested, including two young women earlier that same year in Montgomery, Ala. But this time the outcome was different.

Unlike those earlier incidents, Rosa ParksÍ courageous refusal to bow to an unfair law sparked a crucial chapter in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

“I didn’t get on the bus with the intention of being arrested,” she often said later. “I got on the bus with the intention of going home.”

Pressures had been building in Montgomery for some time to deal with public transportation practices that treated blacks as second-class citizens. Those pressures were increased when a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, was arrested on March 2, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat to a white person.

Colvin did not violate the city bus policy by not relinquishing her seat. She was not sitting in the front seats reserved for whites, and there was no other place for her to sit. Even under the double standards of the bus seating policy at the time, blacks sitting behind the white reserved section in a bus were only required to give up their seats to whites if there was another seat available for them. But despite the apparent legality of her refusal to give up her seat, Colvin was still convicted.

(via OrthoCuban)