On March 2, 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old black teenager, did the same thing.

Parks is remembered for having sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which Colvin helped end more than a year later when she, along with co-plaintiffs Mary Louise Smith, Aurelia Browder and Susie McDonald, served as witnesses in Browder v. Gayle , a case that ended segregation in public transportation not just in Alabama, but eventually all across the United States when the Supreme Court affirmed the ruling.

Parks became an icon of resistance. Meanwhile, Colvin became an outcast, branded a troublemaker within her community after her initial arrest and conviction. She was abandoned by civil rights leaders when she became pregnant at 16. Although she has gained recognition in recent years — a book about her life won the National Book Award in 2009 — Colvin is still largely glossed over by history and her immense contribution and sacrifice has never been officially recognized by the U.S. government, as Parks was.

Teen Vogue spoke with Colvin, now 78 years old, at her home in New York and by phone about her experiences. The following is a condensed and edited version of those conversations.

Teen Vogue: Tell us about the day of your protest.

Claudette Colvin:

I was in 11th grade.

It started out a normal day.We got out early and 13 of us students walked to downtown Montgomery and boarded a city bus on Dexter Avenue, exactly across the street from Dr. Martin Luther King’s church. As the bus proceeded down Court Square, more white passengers got on the bus. In order for this white lady to have a seat, four students would have to vacate because a white person wasn’t allowed to sit across from a colored person. So the bus driver asked for the four seats and three of the students got up. I remained seated.

History had me glued to the seat. Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth’s hand were pushing down on the other shoulder. I was paralyzed between these two women, I couldn’t move.

February was, at that time, only Negro History Week, not history month. But the faculty members at my school said we were are gonna do it the whole month because African Americans — at that time we were called "negroes" — were deliberately kept out of American history. The boys liked to talk about Jackie Robinson, breaking the baseball barrier. My instructor talked about Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. We started talking about the injustice and how we were discriminated against locally. That’s why I was so fired up and so angry when the bus driver asked me to get up. It was more than myself.

Some white students [on the bus] were yelling: “You have to get up, you have to get up.” And a colored girl, one of the students said, “Well she don’t have to do nothing but stay black and die.”

We were still on our best behavior taking all of the insults from the white passengers. The bus driver knew that I wasn’t breaking the law, because these seats were already for colored people. Under Jim Crow law, the bus driver could ask you to give up your seat at any time but the problem was that [the number of seats for black and white people had to be even]. He drove the bus about four stops, and when we stopped, traffic patrol got on the bus and asked me to get up. I told him I paid my fare and said, “It’s my constitutional right!” The patrol officer yelled to the bus driver that he didn’t have any jurisdiction here.