Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin Rosa Parks born in 1913 was a civil rights activist, and well-respected leader in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). A few years later Claudette Colvin was born in 1939; she was also a civil rights activist. They are similar but one must contrast them to see the differences. People show more compassion for Rosa Parks. Though both African-American women refused to give up a seat on a bus, Rosa Parks is more well-known because she was older and well-respected, but because Claudette Colvin was fifteen years old and became pregnant out-of-wedlock, poor, and was not respected or given sympathy; she is not as well-known. One thing that makes a big difference in Rosa and Claudette is their public perception. Claudette Colvin refused to give up her…show more content… Colvin growing up in one Montgomery’s poorer neighborhoods was looked down upon. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was riding home on a bus after school when the bus started filling up with white people; the bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white passenger. According to biography.com, Colvin rejected saying, “It is my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it is my constitutional right.” Colvin was then arrested for violating segregation laws and taken to jail. Claudette lonely in jail and terrified of what the white people might do to her finally was bailed out by her minister. Nine months later, on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus. She sat down in a seat labeled for colored passengers. The bus began to fill with white passengers; the driver noticed several whites standing in the aisle. The driver stopped the bus and relocated the sign separating the two sections.
