She was too dark skinned for the civil rights leaders to get behind. Rosa was "fair skinned" and they felt she would be.a.better image to get behind
Nah Fam.
At the time, Parks was a seamstress in a local department store but was also a secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).
Colvin knew her very well.
"I became very active in her youth group and we use to meet every Sunday afternoon at the Luther church," she says.
"Ms Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom."
Colvin says Parks had the right image to become the face of resistance to segregation because of her previous work with the NAACP. The organisation didn't want a teenager in the role, she says.
Another factor was that before long Colvin became pregnant.
"They said they didn't want to use a pregnant teenager because it would be controversial and the people would talk about the pregnancy more than the boycott," Colvin says.
On the night of Parks' arrest, the Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system. Soon afterwards, on 5 December, 40,000 African-American bus passengers boycotted the system and that afternoon, black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), electing a young pastor, Martin Luther King Jr, as their president.
How Claudette Colvin helped spark America's Civil Rights Movement at the age of 15.
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. HBD Queen
