A 15-year-old boarded a city bus on March 2 after her school day. She ended the day in handcuffs.
That teenager was Claudette Colvin. The city was Montgomery, Alabama. The year was 1955.
As the bus filled, Ms. Colvin remained seated, refusing to surrender her place to white passengers as the unjust laws of the era required.
The very boycott that moved Martin Luther King, Jr. into the national spotlight was first led by a schoolgirl who answered the call on March 2, 1955, months before the arrest of Rosa Parks, on December 1, 1955.
Ms. Colvin later explained that it was as if “history had me glued to the seat.”
She wasn’t the only one to have that opinion. Colvin’s minister bailed her out of jail and informed her that her actions had stirred revolution in Montgomery.
The headlines featured history’s icons in their 30s and 40s. Claudette led as a brave woman in the making.
Twenty-seven years ago, Ms. Colvin was interviewed from her then-home in the Bronx, NY. The retired nurses aide and mother of two recalled that she had been studying Black History month in her segregated school. She spoke of being inspired by Harriet Tubman who freed slaves via the Underground Railroad and Sojourner Truth, a former slave and abolition leader.
Claudette said, “I had freedom on my mind.”
Colvin didn’t experience slavery, but she most certainly lived in a world of less freedom in the land founded on freedom.
“We couldn’t try on clothes. You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot…and take it to the store.” Colvin related to the reporter. “Can you imagine all of that in my mind? My head was just too full of Black History, you know, the oppression that we went through. It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn’t get up.”
Ms. Colvin related her panic in the Montgomery jail, “It was just like a Western movie. And then I got scared, and panic come over me, and I started crying. Then I started saying the Lord’s Prayer.”
Why was Claudette Colvin not the icon of the Montgomery Bus Boycott? Colvin rationalized that Rosa Parks was an adult role model who was simply attempting to commute to work and live life.
Still, Claudette did it. She was inspired by fearless women. She showed her own bravery…at 15 years young.
Just days before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was honored on the federal holiday that to this day informs us of times when the focus on differences in skin color irrationally fueled hatred but marks better days of opportunities and clarity, Ms. Claudette Colvin passed from this earthly existence. On January 13, 2026, the 86-year-old died peacefully of natural causes in her Texas home.
Let’s inspire and keep freedom on our minds. (By Robin Smith)
Follow-up: After the boycott, Colvin and her family moved to New York, where she remained for 50 years before moving back to Alabama in 2004. She worked as a nurse’s aide, and it was only after she retired that she began to speak more openly about her actions, often speaking at schools about that day in 1955. In recent years, Colvin’s role in the early days of the movement has garnered more attention, although she is still frequently overlooked in accounts of the boycott. In 2016, she and her family pushed for more content on her role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
A street in Montgomery was named for her and March 2, 2017, was designated Claudette Colvin Day by the city. In 2018, Congressman Joe Crowley of New York issued a Congressional Certificate to Colvin recognizing her public service contributions. In December 2019, Colvin was included on one of four granite historical markers dedicated along with the Rosa Parks statue on Dexter Avenue in Montgomery. In late 2022, Colvin petitioned the Montgomery Circuit Court to expunge her 1955 arrest record, and on December 16, 2022, Montgomery Circuit Court judge Calvin Williams cleared her of all charges. Colvin died on January 13, 2026./Editor