Synopsis

Take a deep breath, exhale, you are now in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1950s. Look at yourself, your body is changing, you are in the skin and soul of Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old black girl with a quiet life.

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You walk out of school, wait for the bus, grab your ticket. You’ve always known that being black doesn’t give you any rights, but it does give you a lot of duties. You know that there are white people on one side and you on the other. Once you have your ticket, you go in and out the back door. Once you are settled, you also know that if a white person doesn’t have a seat, you will have to give up yours. It has always been that way in Montgomery. But on March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin refused to get up. Despite threats from the driver, who was armed, despite threats from other white passengers and some black passengers, she remained seated. After being arrested and thrown in jail, she decided to attack the city and plead not guilty. No one had ever dared to do this before. And yet, no one will remember her name. It was the beginning of a journey that would take Claudette Colvin from struggle to
abandonment.

When, nine months later, Rosa Parks, a lighter-skinned seamstress, took the same stand as Claudette, everything changed. Soon supported by a young minister who had recently arrived in Montgomery, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks became a hero, the spark that launched the civil rights movement. History is in the making. Claudette Colvin made it all possible, but she was the one who was forgotten. She still lives in the United States today. She is 81 years old.