Too tired to give up her seat on the bus home from high school, on March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin refused to move for a white passenger—nine months before Rosa Parks would do the same. Later she said that she felt inspired by the memories of earlier pioneers to stand—or sit—her ground. As she told Newsweek, “I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, ‘Sit down girl!’ I was glued to my seat.”