Claudette Colvin, a civil rights icon who was a pioneer in the desegregation of public transportation before Rosa Parks, has died at the age of 86.
Her foundation announced her death on Tuesday, calling her a ‘beloved mother, grandmother, and civil rights pioneer.’
‘To us, she was more than a historical figure. She was the heart of our family, wise, resilient, and grounded in faith,’ the statement read.
‘We will remember her laughter, her sharp wit, and her unwavering belief in justice and human dignity.’
On March 2, 1955, a teenaged Colvin refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus to a white woman and was arrested.
Her act of defiance came nine months before Rosa Parks sensationally did the same thing, in the same town of Montgomery.
On December 1 of that year, Parks was arrested for disorderly conduct, which ignited the 13-month Montgomery Bus Boycott that ultimately motivated the Supreme Court to rule that segregation on buses was unconstitutional.
Parks became the face of the movement as a well-respected seamstress and secretary of the local NAACP.
‘My mother told me to be quiet about what I did,’ Colvin told the New York Times in a 2009 interview.
Claudette Colvin, pictured above at 13-years-old in 1953, became a civil rights hero when she refused to give up her seat for a white woman, nine months before Rosa Parks did
Colvin, pictured above at an event in New York in 2020, didn’t receive the same level of fame as Parks because she was a pregnant teen from a lower-class family
Parks, pictured above during the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956, refused to give up her seat on December 1, 1955
‘She told me: “Let Rosa be the one. White people aren’t going to bother Rosa, her skin is lighter than yours and they like her.”‘
Colvin’s story went largely unnoticed until writer Philip Hoose penned her biography, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, in 2009.
Hoose discovered that over 100 letters of support were written for Colvin after her arrest, but leaders in the civil rights movement didn’t think she would be a good fit for the face of the movement.
‘They worried they couldn’t win with her,’ Hoose told the Times in 2009, adding: ‘Words like “mouthy,” “emotional” and “feisty” were used to describe her.’
Colvin then learned she was expecting a baby a few months later. She never identified the baby’s father, but said he was a married man and described the encounter as statutory rape.
Colvin was also from a lower-class family. Her father abandoned them when she was young, and her mother wasn’t able to support Colvin and her siblings.
The children were then sent to live with Colvin’s aunt on a farm in rural Alabama, and they became her adoptive parents.
Colvin’s background meant she flew under the radar for decades. ‘They [local civil-rights leaders] wanted someone, I believe, who would be impressive to white people, and be a drawing,’ she told The Guardian in a 2021 interview.
Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in a Supreme Court case that ruled segregated buses were unconstitutional. She was represented by Fred Gray, who she is pictured with above in 2021 at a ceremony celebrating her record getting expunged
Colvin said in an interview that her mother told her to let Parks, pictured above during the bus boycott, be the face of the movement
Colvin, pictured above in 2009, led a quiet life as a nursing aide in New York after the Civil Rights Movement
‘You know what I mean? Like the main star. And they didn’t think that a dark-skinned teenager, low income without a degree, could contribute.’
‘It’s like reading an old English novel when you’re the peasant, and you’re not recognized,’ Colvin said.
Colvin told her biographer Hoose that on the day she refused to give up her seat, ‘rebellion was on my mind.’
She recalled a white woman in her 40s entering the bus, and the driver asked her and three other black girls to give up their seats so the woman could have the row to herself.
Colvin refused to get up, even as the bus driver became agitated and screamed at her to leave the row.
‘So I was not going to move that day. I told them that history had me glued to the seat,’ she said in 2021.
When officers arrived, Colvin remained defiant. She was forcibly removed from the bus and said one of the officers kicked her.
Newspaper accounts of her arrest noted that she ‘hit, scratched, and kicked’ the officers during her arrest.
Colvin pictured as a child around 1953 (left) and in 1998 (right)
Aurelia Browder, pictured above, was also a plaintiff in the Supreme Court case to outlaw segregation on buses
While she was handcuffed in the back of a squad car, Colvin recalled that the officers tried to guess her bra size.
She was charged with assault, disorderly conduct, and violating segregation law. A minister bailed her out of jail, and she was later found guilty of assault.
Colvin was one of four black women, not including Parks, arrested and fined that year for refusing to give up their seats on the bus.
Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Mary Louise Smith, and Colvin filed a lawsuit in Montgomery challenging segregated bus seating in 1956.
Famous civil rights lawyer Fred Gray, 95, who also represented Parks, was their attorney in the lawsuit.
The case, Browder v. Gayle, reached the Supreme Court and ended bus segregation. Colvin was a star witness.
‘I don’t mean to take anything away from Mrs. Parks, but Claudette gave all of us the moral courage to do what we did,’ Gray told The Washington Post.
Newspaper archives of the incident said Colvin was found guilty of assault after she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white woman
Colvin, pictured above during an interview with CBS, is survived by her youngest son, her sisters, and grandchildren
Even though Colvin’s story gained the attention of Parks and Martin Luther King Jr, her defiance flew under the radar for decades.
She never married but had a second son in 1960. Colvin then moved to New York City and became a nurse’s aide.
In 2021, Colvin’s record was expunged. She said at the time that she filed the petition to show younger generations that progress was possible.
She lived in the Bronx and sat down for her 2009 interview with the Times at a diner in Parkchester, which she frequented. Colvin was living in Texas at the time of her death.
Her eldest son, Raymond, died in 1993. She is survived by her younger son, Randy, her sisters, and her grandchildren.