On March 2, 1955, a 15-year-old Black high school junior named Claudette Colvin boarded a segregated city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, taking a window seat near the back. When the driver ordered her to give up her seat so a White woman could be more comfortable, Ms. Colvin — who had been studying Black history in class, learning about abolitionists like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth — did not budge.