Claudette Colvin, arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up bus seat, dies : NPR

Claudette Colvin poses for a portrait on February 5, 2009, in New York.

Julie Jacobson/AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Julie Jacobson/AP

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Claudette Colvin, whose 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus helped spark the modern civil rights movement, has died. She was 86 years old.

Her death was announced Tuesday by the Claudette Colvin Legacy Foundation. The organization’s Ashley D. Roseboro confirmed she died of natural causes in Texas.

Colvin, aged 15, was arrested nine months before Rosa Parks gained international fame for also refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus.

Colvin had boarded the bus on March 2, 1955, on her way home from high school. The first rows were reserved for white passengers. Colvin sat in the back with other black passengers. When the white section was full, the bus driver ordered the black passengers to give up their seats to the white passengers. Colvin refused.

“My mindset was all about freedom,” Colvin said in 2021 about his refusal to give up his seat.

“So I wasn’t going to move that day,” she said. “I told them the story had me glued to the seat.”

At the time of Colvin’s arrest, frustration was growing over the way black people were treated in the city’s bus system. Another black teenager, Mary Louise Smith, was arrested and fined in October for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger.

It was the arrest of Parks, who was a local NAACP activist, on December 1, 1955, that became the final catalyst for the year-long Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott thrust the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. into the national spotlight and is considered the beginning of the modern civil rights movement.

Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in the landmark lawsuit that banned racial segregation on Montgomery buses. His death comes just over a month after Montgomery marked the 70th anniversary of the bus boycott.

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed said Colvin’s action “helped lay the legal and moral foundation for the movement that would change America.”

Colvin was never as well known as Parks, and Reed said her courage “is too often overlooked.”

“The life of Claudette Colvin reminds us that movements are built not only by those whose names are most familiar, but also by those whose courage comes early, quietly and at great personal sacrifice,” Reed said. “His legacy challenges us to tell the full truth about our history and honor all the voices who helped bend the arc toward justice.”

Colvin filed a motion in 2021 to have his court record expunged. A judge granted the request.

“When I think about why I’m seeking to have my name cleared by the state, it’s because I believe that if that happened, it would show the generation growing up now that progress is possible and things get better,” Colvin said at the time. “It will inspire them to make the world a better place.”