Dorothy Counts; the teenager who challenged the segregation, 1957!

Dorothy Counts made national news in September 1957, when at the age of 15, she became one of the first and, at the time, the only black student to enroll in the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School in Charlotte (North Carolina).

As she got out of the car to head down the hill, her father told her, “Hold your head high. You are inferior to no one.”

There were roughly 200 to 300 people in the hostile crowd mostly students and parents who followed her and screamed racial epithets at her. The crowd taunted her, spit on her, and pelted her with sticks and pebbles.

Unafraid, Dorothy walked by without reacting but told the press later that many people threw rocks at her—most of which landed in front of her feet—and that students formed walls but parted ways at the last instant to allow her to walk past ....

Photographer Douglas Martin won the 1957 World Press Photo of the Year with an image of Counts being mocked by a crowd on her first day of school.