Claudette Colvin, whose 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama, bus helped spark the modern civil rights movement, has died. She was 86.

Colvin was arrested months before Rosa Parks gained international fame before refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus.

A bus driver called police on March 2, 1955, to complain that two Black girls were sitting near two White girls in violation of segregation laws. One of the Black girls moved toward the rear when asked, a police report said, but Colvin refused and was arrested. She was 15 at the time.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    3·
    23 hours ago

    I know Parks got all the fame while this lady got very little recognition, but it makes me wonder how many other acts of defiance on buses like this that got no attention.

  • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
    10·
    2 days ago

    "Several people were arrested for declining to give up their seats on Montgomery buses. Maxwell Air Force Base employee Viola White was arrested in 1944, and Mary Wingfield was arrested in 1949. Teenager Mary Louise Smith was arrested in October 1954. In March 1955, Claudette Colvin, a fifteen-year-old student at Booker T. Washington Magnet High School, was also arrested. Other arrests included Aurelia Browder on April 29, 1955, and Susie McDonald on October 21, 1955.

    Supreme Court ordered the integration of Montgomery’s buses on December 20, 1956"

    12 years of arresting black women before anything changed. 12 fucking years.

      • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
        35·
        2 days ago

        The whole thing with Rosa Parks is sad, but also a brilliant lesson for anyone trying to effect real political change.

        For those who don’t know about this, Parks didn’t just spontaneously decide not to give up her seat one day. Rather, she was an activist with the civil rights movement who volunteered to deliberately recreate Claudette’s spur of the moment act of defiance, because she had a background that was clean of any issues that might have been used to attack her character, so she could more easily be turned into a figurehead and cause celebre by the movement. Absolutely sucks that it’s necessary to think like that, but it was smart of them to do so, and very effective. Parks still made a huge sacrifice and deserves to be lionised as a hero, but I for one will always try to mention Claudette in the same breath.

  • zd9@lemmy.world
    211·
    2 days ago

    What a fucking legend. Absolute beast. If we had 10,000 Claudette Colvins we could easily end this regime’s reign of terror.