By Cynthia Littleton

Paulette Roby learned the meaning of civil disobedience when she was 13 years old.

As a rising teenager in Birmingham, Alabama, Roby wanted to participate in the civil rights demonstrations organized by Dr. Martin Luther King in her hometown in 1963, but her mother refused to let her leave school. Young Paulette followed her conscience, participating in demonstrations and marches, and she never regretted it. Her mother eventually forgave her.

More than 60 years later, Roby and a friend who had joined her in the protest all those years ago, Judy Stickney, traveled from Birmingham to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention to witness firsthand Kamala Harris’s ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket in her historic bid for the White House. The pair wore matching T-shirts proclaiming Birmingham “Home of the OG Soldiers.”