Wednesday, January 14, 2026- Claudette Colvin, a pivotal yet long‑underrecognized figure in the American civil rights movement, has died at the age of 86. Colvin’s death was confirmed by the Claudette Colvin Legacy Foundation; she passed away under hospice care in Texas from natural causes.
Her courage first drew national attention in 1955, when at just 15 years old she refused to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white passenger, an act of defiance that occurred nine months before Rosa Parks’s more widely known protest.
Though her name was overshadowed for decades, Colvin’s stance and resulting arrest helped catalyze legal challenges to public transport segregation. She became one of the plaintiffs in the landmark lawsuit Browder v. Gayle, which successfully argued that Montgomery’s segregated bus laws were unconstitutional, contributing directly to the desegregation of public transportation across the United States. Her role in this critical legal victory is increasingly acknowledged as foundational to the broader movement for racial justice.
Colvin spent much of her later life out of the spotlight, working for many years as a nurse’s aide, raising her family, and advocating for recognition of civil rights pioneers whose stories were overlooked.
In recent years, efforts to honor her legacy gained traction, including the expungement of her juvenile arrest record and renewed public interest in her contributions. Colvin is remembered not only as a brave teenager whose actions helped reshape American law but also as a beloved mother, grandmother, and enduring symbol of grassroots courage.
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