Claudette Colvin, whose refusal to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus as a teenager preceded the better-known efforts of Rosa Parks by less than a year, has died. She was 86.
"It is with profound sadness that the Claudette Colvin Foundation and family announce the passing of Claudette Colvin, a beloved mother, grandmother, and civil rights pioneer," the foundation and family said in a statement posted on Facebook. "She leaves behind a legacy of courage that helped change the course of American history."
Colvin died of natural causes in southeast Texas near Houston, said Ashley Roseboro of Roseboro Holdings, a Washington, D.C.-based management and community engagement firm that represents the Colvin family.
Montgomery Mayor Steven L. Reed said Colvin's life "reminds us that movements are built not only by those whose names are most familiar, but by those whose courage comes early, quietly, and at great personal cost."
It was on March 2, 1955, that Colvin, then a 15-year-old, bespectacled honors student at Montgomery’s Booker T. Washington High, stepped onto a City Lines bus in Montgomery. She recalled wearing a light blue sweater and a navy blue skirt.
