Claudette Colvin's refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama in 1955 was a key moment in the US civil rights movement. "History had me glued to that seat," she later said.
Claudette Colvin, seen here in 2009, was a key figure in the US civil rights movementImage: Julie Jacobson/AP Photo/picture alliance
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Claudette Colvin, who became an US civil rights pioneer after her detention for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Alabama in 1955, has died aged 86, her foundation has said.
Colvin "leaves behind a legacy of courage that helped change the course of American history," her foundation said.
#BlackLivesMatter: Key figures in the US Civil Rights Movement
The body of late civil rights icon and congressman John Lewis will lie in state at the US Capitol. But who, exactly, was Lewis? And which other figures played a divisive role in the US Civil Rights Movement?
Image: Getty Images/Keystone
'Necessary trouble'
The image of civil rights leader and congressman John Lewis, who died on July 17, is projected onto the statue of Confederate Robert Lee in Richmond, Virginia. A champion of non-violent protest, he attended the 1963 March on Washington and played a key role in abolishing racial segregation. He famously declared: "Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble."
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/S. Helber
'A voteless people is a hopeless people'
Amelia Boynton Robinson was a civil rights pioneer who fought for voting rights for African Americans. She helped organize a 5-day civil rights march from the city of Selma to Montgomery in Alabama in March 1965. During the protest, Robinson and others were brutally beaten by state police. Images of what became known as Bloody Sunday went around the world.
Image: Getty Images/S. Lovekin
'The right man and the right place'
Thurgood Marshall, pictured here in 1957, was the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court. Announcing his pick, US President Lyndon B. Johnson declared it was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place." Marshall, who was born in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, successfully fought against the racial segregation of US schools and universities.
Rosa Parks made history, when on December 1, 1955, she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man. Her subsequent arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, led by Martin Luther King. The 385 days of protest proved effective when on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld a ruling declaring segregated busses unconstitutional in Alabama and Montgomery.
Image: picture alliance/Everett Collection
'I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land'
Martin Luther King at Memphis' Lorraine Motel, on the day of his killing on April 4, 1968. One day earlier, King famously said: "I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land." Also pictured (to King's left): Civil rights activist Hosea Williams and Baptist minister Jesse Jackson, to his right, Ralph Abernathy.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo
Civil Rights Ambassador Young
Andrew Jackson Young was in Memphis, Tennessee, on the day of Martin Luther King’s murder. The politician, civil rights leader, and clergyman had joined King in leading the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1967, President-elect Jimmy Carter nominated Young as the US ambassador to the United Nations. In 1981, he was elected mayor of Atlanta.
Image: Getty Images/D. Oulds
'We are nonviolent with people who are nonviolent with us'
Malcolm Little, better known as Malcolm X (left), rejected Martin Luther King’s notion of non-violent protest. He was portrayed by actor Denzel Washington (right) in Spike Lee’s 1992 biopic "Malcolm X." Once the African American leader of Nation of Islam, he later abandoned the organization, becoming one of its most fervent critics. He was assassinated on February 21, 1965.
'My faith in the Constitution is whole'
Barbara Jordan was the first woman and the first African American keynote speaker at a Democratic National Convention. In 1974, the attorney, legislator, and educator declared in the House of Representatives that "my faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total."
Image: Getty Images/Keystone/Hulton Archive
A jazz and civil rights icon
Ella Fitzgerald, born in a New York suburb in 1917, was not only a jazz but also a civil rights icon. Fitzgerald, who won 13 Grammys and sold some 40 million records, always insisted musicians touring with her be treated equally, regardless of their skin color. She was the first African American woman to perform at Los Angeles’ Mocambo night club after actress Marilyn Monroe publicly backed her.
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Strong, black women
Novelist Alice Walker became involved in the US Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. She was just 17 when she joined the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Walker’s novels feature strong, black women. And her work The Color Purple won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983.
Image: Getty Images/H. Brace
An outspoken activist
Baptist minister Al Sharpton speaking at George Floyd’s funeral service. In 2004, Sharpton was a Democratic candidate for the presidential race. Two years later, in 2006, he led a protest march in honor of Sean Bell, a 23-year-old African American who had been shot dead by police. Al Sharpton is an outspoken and at times controversial activist.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C. Gonzalez
Kings of hope
US President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama visited a Washington homeless shelter in January 2017, where they helped finish a mural of Martin Luther King. Obama was the first-ever African American to be elected president of the United States.
Image: Imago/Zuma Press
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What did Claudette Colvin do?
Colvin's act on March 2, 1955, was partly informed by what she had learned studying Black history at school.
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"My mindset was on freedom," Colvin said in 2021 of her defiance.
"So I was not going to move that day,” she said. "I told them that history had me glued to the seat."
Her refusal came after the driver of the bus taking her home from high school ordered Black passengers to give up their seats to white passengers, as the white section at the front of the vehicle was full.
She said that although the white woman concerned could have sat on the seat opposite, that woman "refused because ... a white person wasn't supposed to sit close to a negro."
Colvin was briefly put in jail for disturbing public order. The next year, she became one of four Black female plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit challenging the segregation rules on buses in Montgomery.
The lawsuit was successful and had consequences for public transportation throughout the US including trains, airplanes and taxis.
Colvin is seen her at a press conference after her juvenile criminatl record was expunged in 2021Image: Vasha Hunt/AP Photo/picture alliance
Late recognition for Colvin
Colvin's brave act was overshadowed by that of Parks, who was already a prominent member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) at the time of her arrest for defying the segregation laws.
Parks' detention triggered a yearlong bus boycott in Montgomery, an action that led to Martin Luther King Jr. becoming the spearhead of the civil rights movement.
It ended up considerably advancing the cause of Black people in the US in the 1960s, among other things by ending legal segregation and securing them voting rights.
For her part, Colvin, who was born in Alabama in 1939 as the eldest of eight sisters, was ostracized from the civil rights movement when she conceived a child as an unmarried woman.
She remained virtually uncelebrated for decades, working in the elderly care sector, but received recognition later in life, among other things being the subject of a 2009 biography by Phillip Hoose, "Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice," which won the US National Book Award for young people's literature.
However, it was only in 2021 that the record of her 1955 arrest and adjudication of delinquency was expunged by a US court after she filed a petition.
"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," Colvin said at the time. "It will inspire them to make the world better.”
