Our Unsung Heros

My first unsung hero relates back to Rosa Parks. Her name is Claudette Colvin. While many were taught that Rosa Parks was the first to famously refuse to give up a bus seat, nine months before her protest in Montgomery, Alabama, then fifteen year old Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a standing white woman after school. Colvin was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested. She would later go on to be one of the principal plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case Browder vs. Gayle, which declared bus segregation unconstitutional under the Fourteenth amendment.

My second unsung hero is Shirley Chisholm. Shirley Chisholm was as determined a politician as she was an educator – the first Black woman elected to Congress, Chisholm served as the director of a daycare center for many years before joining the US House of Representatives for New York. Chisholm also went on to run for the presidential bid in 1972, becoming the first African-American to be a major-party candidate. Her name was widely floated as a possible candidate for several jobs related to education, including president of the City College of New York and Chancellor of the New York City public school system. In 1982, Chisholm declined to seek re–election.

My next unsung hero relates to Dr. Martin Luter king, and she is Maude Ballou. Maude Ballou was the personal secretary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. During that time, she saved personal notes and papers from the civil rights leader. weeks before Dr. King’s assassination. On October 17th in New York, Ballou will hold an auction for the items through the Heritage Auctions. A portion of the proceeds will be used to establish an education fund at Alabama State University. In an exclusive interview Tuesday with The Associated Press, Ballou recalled times both rewarding and frightening in those turbulent years, including an especially poignant moment with King in the mid-1950s. They also said that she wanted to sell some of his writing to people.