Constance Maud worked for many years for women’s suffrage, participating energetically in suffrage activity and writing articles for the suffragist newspaper Votes for Women. No Surrender was published in November 1911; it is faithful to real events, and some of the main characters are based on leading suffrage figures.

Penelope Mortimer was a feminist to her fingertips. In fact, thinking about the how and why, the next Biannually needs to have a piece on Penelope Mortimer and Feminism. (Sadly, as announced on the Persephone Letter, the next Biannually will not be published until October. However, it will be rather a special issue.) For now, read Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, the best of Penelope Mortimer's novels: it's the angriest, the most upsetting, but with its – slightly – upbeat ending the most optimistic.

It's International Women's Day today so all week on the Post we shall have the five Persephone writers who, in our view, contributed most to women's freedom of expression. To explain: Dorothy Whipple may be our bestselling writer, and she was definitely a feminist (look at her quiet rage about the way Charlotte is treated by Geoffrey in They Were Sisters or her pride in Jane setting up shop in High Wages or her more resigned fury at Young Anne being treated differently from her brothers) but you would probably not choose her as a top five feminist 'influencer'. We would first of all choose Dorothy Canfield Fisher, named by Eleanor Roosevelt as one of the ten most influential women in America (at the time) and in her quiet way a profound thinker about the cause of women. This autumn we are publishing The Deepening Stream (1930) and there is a case to be made for Matey being the first modern heroine. She takes it for granted that she has a job and has children. But is also very happily married. And look at Evangeline in The Home-Maker. Leaving the house early to have her breakfast in a cafeteria before going to work. Because she prefers it. Because the children are perfectly happy (happier) with their father. And yet this was published nearly a hundred years ago!

'Once the Montgomery bus boycott began, Claudette Colvin had little contact with the civil rights leadership. Her high school expelled her when she became pregnant. Employers fired her when they discovered her connection to the lawsuits. She eventually moved to New York City and worked as a nurse's aide. Now in her late 60s, she has avoided publicity.' But then there was an illustrated biography of her for younger readers, (which we must all read). Here she is with the author, Philip Hoose, in 2009 when he won a National Book Award, details here.

So some months after the incident on the bus there was a civil lawsuit that became known as Browder v Gayle. The ruling found that bus segregation was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment. Claudette Colvin faced hostile cross-examination but emerged as the star witness. The other heroine of the case was Aurelia Browder, here. What an incredible duo: Claudette and Aurelia.

'Colvin's unplanned act of bravery was almost written out of civil rights history. The Montgomery bus boycott began nine months after her arrest, spurred by the arrest of Rosa Parks in an almost identical incident...In truth the actions that Colvin took planted the seed for the boycott and, critically, the legal foundations to challenge transportation segregation laws in federal court' (here). (Isn't this photograph horrifying? It brings back vividly going to the American South in 1966 and seeing benches saying 'whites only'. In America! In the Sixties! I think we all need to re-read The Expendable Man this weekend.)

So sixty-six years ago, on 2 March 1955, Claudette got on a bus and took a window seat near the exit door. The driver instructed her to give up her seat for a white passenger standing nearby. She refused and two white police officers dragged her from the bus. This  was the result.