Claudette Colvin, who as a teenager was arrested in 1955 after refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, has died. Colvin’s act preceded the more famous case of Rosa Parks later that year, and Colvin’s case helped bring about the end of segregation in that state.

Arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white bus passenger

Colvin died Tuesday while in hospice care in Texas, according to a spokesperson for her family and for the Claudette Colvin Legacy Foundation. Colvin was arrested on March 2, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat for a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, in a case that eventually helped end bus segregation in the city; she was 15 at the time of her arrest. Colvin reflected on her arrest in a 2018 interview with the BBC. She noted that even as a teenager, she was familiar with the history of Black women resisting racism and oppression, and that they inspired her in her act of civil disobedience. “Whenever people ask me, ‘Why didn’t you get up when the bus driver asked you?’ I say it felt as though Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth’s hands were pushing me down on the other shoulder,” Colvin told the BBC.

Setting the stage for Rosa Parks, the bus boycott

Following Colvin’s arrest, another Black teenager, Mary Louise Smith, was arrested in a similar incident in October. In December, Rosa Parks similarly refused to give up her seat, and her arrest helped spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., which helped bring about the end of segregation and launched the widespread Civil Rights Movement. Colvin lived in the same area as Parks, who led a church youth group that Colvin attended. “Ms. Parks was quiet and very gentle and very soft-spoken, but she would always say we should fight for our freedom,” Colvin recalled in her BBC interview. Colvin acknowledged why the bus boycott was organized around Parks, a seamstress and secretary for the local NAACP chapter, rather than Colvin, who became pregnant that year. “They said they didn’t want to use a pregnant teenager because it would be controversial and the people would talk about the pregnancy more than the boycott,” Colvin remembered.

Colvin’s record cleared decades later

Even though Colvin was not the public face of the boycott, her case was one of several included in Browder v. Gayle; in 1957, the Supreme Court ruling on the case struck down bus segregation throughout Alabama. While that victory ended the segregated system under which Colvin was arrested, it did not completely clear her own legal record. Colvin had been charged and convicted for violating Montgomery’s segregation laws and for assaulting a police officer during her arrest. Although her segregation conviction was overturned, she was put on probation and was not told when her probation period had ended. In 2021, Colvin and a legal team representing her succeeded in having her criminal record expunged. At the time, Colvin stated to the court, “When I think about why I’m seeking to have my name cleared by the state, it is because I believe if that happened it would show the generation growing up now that progress is possible and things do get better. It will inspire them to make the world better.”  

Colvin recalled yelling, “It’s my constitutional right!” as she was arrested in 1955, and her case helped to affirm those rights for herself and others. Although her name is not as well-known as those of figures like Parks and King, Colvin’s case played a significant role in ending segregation and setting the stage for the other achievements of the Civil Rights Movement.