US civil rights activist Claudette Colvin has died at the age of 86, according to her foundation. Colvin “leaves a legacy of courage that helped change the course of American history,” the statement said Tuesday.
In 1955, the then 15-year-old African American Colvin refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, for a white woman. The teenager was briefly arrested for disturbing public order.
“I stayed seated because the lady could have sat in the seat across from me,” Colvin told reporters in 2023. “People ask me why I refused to move and I say: I was tied to the place by the story.”
Months later, in the same city, Rosa Parks contributed to the birth of the modern civil rights movement in the USA with a similar protest against racial segregation in the US South.
Successful lawsuit
Colvin, along with three other black women, filed a lawsuit against bus segregation in Montgomery a year after her protest. The lawsuit was successful and impacted public transportation across the U.S., including trains, planes and taxis.
However, Colvin’s role in the US civil rights movement was less recognized than that of Parks, who at the time of her protest was already an important member of the local chapter of the civil rights organization NAACP. Parks’ arrest sparked a year-long bus boycott in Montgomery that brought civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence.
Born in Alabama in 1939, Colvin was later ostracized by the civil rights movement when she became pregnant while unmarried. It was only later in her life that she gained recognition for her contribution to the end of racial segregation.
