Claudette Colvin (b.1939). Portrait of the pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement, taken in 1954. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. This occurred nine months before the more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks, helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.