Overview
- The Claudette Colvin Foundation and her family announced her death on Tuesday at age 86.
- At 15, Colvin was arrested on March 2, 1955, in Montgomery for refusing to give up her bus seat, nine months before Rosa Parks’ arrest.
- She joined Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith in Browder v. Gayle, a lawsuit that ended Montgomery’s bus segregation after the Supreme Court let the ruling stand, with Fred Gray as their attorney.
- Her Montgomery juvenile record was expunged in 2021; her family had believed she remained on “indefinite probation,” according to The Colvin Family Legacy.
- Memorial arrangements will be announced later by the Claudette Colvin Foundation and Roseboro Holdings, and her family praised her resilience, faith and commitment to justice.