This is the fourth in a series of profiles of lesser-known but important African-Americans commemorating Black History Month.

A little-known fact: Dec. 1, 1955, was not the first time Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus.

The first time was in 1943. Parks was thrown off the bus by the same driver who would have her arrested 12 years later. That now-legendary incident sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 and the civil rights movement.

But here’s another little-known fact: Parks wasn’t the first person in Montgomery to be jailed after refusing to give up her bus seat in 1955.

That would be Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old African-American from a poor working family. But because of her age and economic status, she was not deemed appropriate by Montgomery’s black community to effectively challenge the city’s segregated bus lines.

So, while Parks became known as “the mother of the civil rights movement,” Colvin was all but forgotten for more than half a century, until Maine writer Phillip Hoose wrote her biography.

On March 2, 1955 — almost nine months before Parks’ arrest — Colvin was riding home from school with some classmates when a white woman boarded the bus and demanded they give up their seats so she could sit in their row. Her classmates moved. Colvin didn’t.

Her act of defiance resulted in her being dragged off the bus by police, thrown into an adult jail cell, and charged with three offenses, of which she was convicted of one — “assaulting” one of the policemen, which she denied. Partly because the charge of violating the city’s segregation law was dropped, the NAACP decided not use her as the vehicle to challenge the law with a bus boycott.

Instead they chose Parks, a middle-aged, mild-mannered seamstress and leader of the local NAACP youth chapter. Colvin, meanwhile, was branded a troublemaker and shunned.

But Colvin’s role in the civil rights movement was not yet over. In 1956, she was one of four plaintiffs to sue to the city in federal court. The case, more than the bus boycott, ended segregation on Montgomery’s bus system.

By that time, Colvin was an unwed mother struggling to make ends meet. And while others involved in the boycott — Parks, E.D. Nixon, Martin Luther King Jr. and others — went on to become synonymous with the civil rights movement, she faded into obscurity.

Then, in 2000, Hoose learned about Colvin while doing research for a book. After much coaxing, he finally persuaded her to participate in a series of interviews.

The result was “Claudette Colvin; Twice Toward Justice,” published in 2009. The biography gained national attention, won numerous awards and finally gave Colvin her due as a civil rights pioneer.

“I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it,” Colvin is quoted in the book. “You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’ And I did.”

Deputy Managing Editor Rod Harmon may be contacted at 791-6450 or at:

rharmon@pressherald.com