Claudette Colvin, February 19, 2026

Описание: Lyles Station Historic School and Museum honors Claudette Colvin today, February 19, 2026.
In March 1955, fifteen-year-old Claudette was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace, breaking the segregation law, and assaulting the officers who arrested her.
The first two charges were eventually dropped, but the assault charge stayed on her record for sixty-six years before being expunged. What led up to her arrest?
She refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, an act Rosa Parks would repeat nine months later, leading to the Montgomery Boycott.
Young Claudette attended Booker T. Washington High School and was a member of the NAACP Youth Council. She was inspired by Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and had recently written an essay for school about the problems of downtown segregation.
On March 2, 1955, she and other Black students were riding a crowded bus. The white section of the bus filled up, which meant that the Blacks were required to give up their seats. The driver called out for them to move, and three of her fellow students did.
Colvin refused.
She later explained in a People interview, “We’d been studying the Constitution…I knew I had rights.”
She added, "It felt as though Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder, and Sojourner Truth was pushing down on another. History had me glued to the seat."
The driver called the police, who handcuffed her and dragged her off the bus. While Colvin said she didn’t fight the officers and went limp, others on the bus claimed she “fought like a little tigress.” Once in the patrol car, the officers made crude comments and joked about her bra size, and Colvin feared she might be assaulted. In an attempt to ease her mind, she “recited Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee, the characters of Midsummer’s Night Dream, the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm.”
Her arrest outraged Civil Rights leaders in Montgomery, including Martin Luther King, Jr., who organized to discuss her arrest with the police commissioner. Her minister bailed her out of jail, and Rosa Parks hoped that Colvin would be active in their youth council and encourage other young people to stand up for civil rights.
Civil rights attorney Fred Gray represented her in court. She was initially convicted in juvenile court in May on all three charges, but when the case was appealed to the Montgomery Circuit Court, only the assault charge was upheld.
Gray took the case known as Browder v. Gayle to federal court in February 1956 with Colvin as one of four plaintiffs challenging bus segregation in Montgomery. The case eventually went before the United States Supreme Court, which affirmed that not just Montgomery, but the state of Alabama, would end all segregation on public transportation.
Rosa Parks is well-known for her refusal to move to the back of the bus nine months after Colvin was dragged off the Montgomery public bus. Historians differ on why Parks has been remembered as the face of the civil rights movement, leading to the boycott. Some believe it was because Parks was an older, more mature individual who would be better regarded than a young girl. Some offered the view it was because Parks’ skin was lighter than Colvin’s. The fact remains that Claudette stood up for her rights by remaining seated and provided Parks with the inspiration to defy segregation.
Not all leaders are adults. One was a petite fifteen-year-old high school student, Claudette Colvin.