"US civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin, arrested at age 15 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white woman in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks' similar but more famous act of defiance, died on Tuesday at age 86. Although she remained a largely unsung figure in the civil rights movement for decades, Colvin's 1955 act of rebellion inspired Parks and others and helped form the basis for the federal lawsuit that outlawed racial segregation in US public transportation."
"In one of the first publicized acts of civil disobedience against Montgomery's Jim Crow rules governing city bus seating by race, Colvin refused to relinquish her seat for a white woman, as ordered by the driver, and stayed put until she was dragged off the bus by police. According to accounts of her testimony in court, Colvin recalled she had been studying anti-slavery abolitionist heroes in school, and felt that she had Harriet Tubman on one shoulder, Sojourner Truth on the other,"
"But Parks, an older seamstress who was secretary of the local NAACP chapter, was seen as a more dignified, sympathetic figure to rally behind as civil rights leaders organized what became the year-long bus boycott that thrust the Rev Martin Luther King Jr to the national stage. In the lead-up to the boycott, which started in December 1955, issues of social class and even colorism"
Claudette Colvin was arrested at 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white woman. Her act occurred nine months before Rosa Parks' more famous refusal and helped inspire others. Colvin's resistance helped form the basis for the federal lawsuit that outlawed racial segregation in US public transportation. Civil rights leaders hesitated to make Colvin a movement symbol because of her youth, poorer background and issues of colorism. About a year after her arrest Colvin became pregnant from an encounter she later described as statutory rape. She was a plaintiff and principal witness in Browder v. Gayle. Colvin died at 86 under hospice care in Texas; Ashley Roseboro, a family spokesperson, confirmed her death.
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