March 2, 1955

Nine months before Rosa Parks, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. 

“History had me glued to the seat,” the civil rights pioneer told the Guardian. “It felt as if Harriet Tubman’s hand was pushing me down on the one shoulder, and Sojourner Truth’s hand was pushing me down on the other. Learning about those two women gave me the courage to remain seated that day.” 

She aspired to become a civil rights lawyer and when the bus driver ordered her to move, she responded, “It’s my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare.” 

When two white police officers tried to drag her from the bus, she told them it was her constitutional right to stay. They handcuffed her, jailed her and charged her with violating segregation laws, disturbing the peace and assaulting a police officer. She learned of racism at a young age, and she was disturbed by what she heard in her all-Black school. 

“One thing especially bothered me – we Black students constantly put ourselves down,” she said in “Twice Toward Justice.” 

“The N-word – we were saying it to each other, to ourselves. I’d hear that word and I would start crying. I wouldn’t let people use it around me.” 

After her arrest, she grew close with Parks. Other Black women followed her lead, refusing to surrender their seats, including Mary Louise Smith, Aurelia Browder and Susie McDonald. They brought the groundbreaking Browder v. Gayle lawsuit that resulted in Montgomery’s segregated bus system being declared unconstitutional. 

“When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it,” she said. “You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

March 1, 1956

The University of Alabama expelled Autherine Lucy, the first Black student ever admitted. Thousands of students rioted.

Lucy charged in court that university officials had been complicit in allowing the disorder, as a means of avoiding compliance with the court order. The trustees expelled her for making such “outrageous, false and baseless accusations.” 

In 1980, the university overturned her expulsion, and a dozen years later, she earned a master’s degree in elementary education at the university, which endowed a scholarship in her name. The institution also hung a portrait with this inscription: “Her initiative and courage won the right for students of all races to attend the university.” 

When the university honored her with a monument in 2019, she looked at the huge gathering and said, “The last time I saw a crowd like this, I didn’t know what they were waiting for.” 

She told the students, “If you don’t know your history, you will forget your past.” She recalled the hate she was showered with when she enrolled and the scripture that gave her strength: “The Lord is with me; I will not fear: What can man do to me?”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Littles will have a big time Saturday in Biggersville

by Rick Cleveland, Mississippi Today
February 28, 2025

To borrow from the Southeastern Conference: Basketball just means more in extreme northeast Mississippi, more commonly known as Hill Country. Never was that more evident than Friday morning at Mississippi Coliseum. In a battle of tiny town titans, the Biggersville girls came from behind to defeat Thrasher 54-47 for the Class 1A state championship in a fiercely contested, well-coached and well-played game.

When the final horn sounded, the basketball court became a sea of emotion, tears flowing seemingly everywhere: tears of joy, tears of despair. As much as the outcome meant – one way or the other to so many folks – it just had to mean more to one family. They would be the Littles of Biggersville.

Cliff Little is the Biggersville head coach. Jana Little, his wife, is an assistant coach. Lainey Jackson Little, their daughter, is a junior guard on the team. Eighteen years ago Cliff and Jana were a young married couple teaching at East Webster in Maben. Cliff was an assistant basketball coach, Jana the team’s scorekeeper. The team qualified for the State Tournament in Jackson, but Jana, six months pregnant, was diagnosed with toxemia (pregnancy-induced hypertension) and stayed home.

On March 1, 2007, Jana gave birth to a daughter, who weighed one pound, 15 ounces. “She would have fit in the palm of my hand,” Cliff Little says. 

They named her Lainey Jackson, the middle name from the name of the place they had planned to be the night Lainey Jack, as they call her, was born. The initial prognosis was grim: She might make it, she might not. Lainey Jack spent the first six weeks of her life in the hospital, mostly in an incubator. The tiny girl showed then what the folks in Biggersville have come to know – that she was a fighter.

Let’s move ahead 17 years to this time last year. The Biggersville girls with Lainey Jack as their second leading scorer and playmaker made it to the State championship semifinals against Lumberton, only to lose by a single point on two late free throws.

Cliff Little also coaches the Biggersville boys, who went on to win the 2024 state championship. So he wasn’t back in Biggersville the day after his girls were eliminated. He wasn’t in the Biggersville gym when his girls took the floor for their first practice in preparation for what occurred Friday morning at Mississippi Coliseum.. The family have rarely missed a day together since.

They certainly didn’t miss on the eighth day of May last year when, during a players-only practice, Lainey Jack went down with a horrible injury to her right knee. A torn ACL that required surgery and months and months of strenuous rehab.

How strenuous? When his daughter first began her rehab at home, Cliff would make sure a garbage can was nearby for when she would need to vomit, which was all too often. But she was determined and kept at it, day after day. We may assume that when you come into this world weighing 31 ounces, such grit comes naturally.

Said Cliff Little, “I told her back during all that rehab that when we won the state championship I was going to have the date – May 8th – inscribed on her ring.”

Lainey Jack was released to play again in December, just seven months after surgery. She is still working to recover the quickness and cutting ability she possessed prior to the injury, but it’s coming.

She was in the starting lineup Friday, a heavy brace on that right knee.. One minute into the game, she swished a 22-foot three-pointer to give Biggersville its first lead. That would be her only basket, but she scrapped and battled throughout. And, afterward, she was in the middle of the celebration, holding the cherished Gold Ball trophy.

“I worked really hard to come back, and that’s what makes this so special,” she said, before deflecting praise to her teammates, 15-year-old Sadiya Hill in particular. Hill scored 24 points to lead the Lions, while Jaylee Stafford scored 19 and pulled down 11 rebounds despite playing much of the fourth quarter with four fouls.

Stafford and Little are juniors. The gifted Hill is just a sophomore and her talented older sister, K’yana Hill is another junior. So there’s a good chance Biggersville will be back again next year. No telling how many championships the 46-year-old Cliff Little will win before he’s done. This makes seven state championships – five boys, two girls – in all for Little.

“They are all special,” Little said when asked where this latest championship ranks. “They’re all special, but this one, considering the circumstances… this one’s extra special.”

Put it this way: There will be an 18th birthday party, combined with a state championship celebration, in Biggersville Saturday.  

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.