MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Claudette Colvin, whose arrest 71 years ago as a teenager for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama helped ignite the civil rights movement, died Tuesday. She was 86.

Colvin’s death was announced in a statement from her family and the Claudette Colvin Legacy Foundation.

“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 statement said. “She leaves behind a legacy of courage that helped change the course of American history.”

Colvin’s arrest came nine months before Rosa Parks’ famous refusal to yield her seat on a Montgomery bus. That led to a yearlong bus boycott in 1956 by Blacks in the city.

Colvin was 15 when she boarded a bus in Montgomery on March 2, 1955, and was subsequently ordered by the driver to give up a window seat near the back of the vehicle to a white woman. She refused and was dragged backward out of the bus.

“History had me glued to the seat,” she said later.

Historian David Garrow told The Washington Post that “Colvin’s experience proved a major motivating force for adult Black activists.”

Another leading figure in the boycott, attorney Fred Gray, brought a federal lawsuit that overturned bus segregation, with Colvin serving as a plaintiff.

The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court and ultimately struck down bus segregation.

“I don’t mean to take anything away from Mrs. Parks, but Claudette gave all of us the moral courage to do what we did,” Gray said.

Colvin was arrested and charged with assault and battery of an officer, disorderly conduct, and for violating the bus segregation ordinance. Her case was tried in juvenile court, and she was convicted of the assault charge; the other charges were dropped.

“I might have considered getting up if the woman had been elderly, but she wasn’t,” Colvin remembered. “She looked about 40. The other three girls in my row got up and moved back, but I didn’t. I just couldn’t.”

Her conviction meant that Colvin was considered a juvenile delinquent for 66 years, and she fought to have the felony expunged from her record.

It was removed in November 2021.

“My reason for (seeking the expungement),” Colvin said at the time, “is because I get to tell my great-grandchildren and my grandchildren what life was like living in segregated America, in segregated Montgomery— the laws, the hardships, and intimidation that took place during those years, and the reason why that took the stand and defied the desegregated law.”

Colvin’s death comes just over a month after Montgomery celebrated the 70th anniversary of the bus boycott, which began in December 1955 after Parks’ arrest.

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed said that Colvin’s action “helped lay the legal and moral foundation for the movement that would change America.”

Colvin was born Claudette Austin in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sept. 5, 1939. Her father, C.P. Austin, left the family when she was young; her mother, Mary Jane Gadson, was unable to support Colvin and her younger sister and turned the girls over to an aunt and uncle, Mary Ann and Q.P. Colvin.

Her adoptive family moved to Montgomery when she was 8, and Colvin was attending Booker T. Washington High School at the time of her arrest.

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