The Courage That Didn't Wait for Permission

On March 2, 1955, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin boarded a Montgomery, Alabama city bus after classes at Booker T. Washington High School. When the driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white passenger, Colvin refused. Two police officers dragged her off the bus in handcuffs. She later said she felt as though Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were pushing her back down into her seat, refusing to let her stand.

Colvin had been studying the Constitution and Black history in class. Something settled deep in her young mind — a conviction that the law and her dignity were on her side. Nine months before Rosa Parks made headlines, this teenager had already drawn her line. Civil rights leaders initially passed over Colvin as a symbol for the movement, but her arrest became part of Browder v. Gayle, the 1956 federal court case that ultimately struck down Montgomery's bus segregation laws.

The psalmist wrote, "The Lord is my light and my salvation — whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life — of whom shall I be afraid?" Claudette Colvin was fifteen. She had no organization behind her, no plan, no cameras rolling. She had only a settled conviction that what was right was right.

Young people do not need to wait for permission to be courageous. When the Lord is their stronghold, even a teenager on a city bus can shake the foundations of injustice. The faith that moves mountains does not check your age first.