US civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin dies at 86

[ad_1] Claudette Colvin, who refused to surrender her seat on a segregated bus in Alabama in 1955 and have become a US civil rights pioneer, has died aged 86, her basis mentioned Tuesday.

Colvin, then aged 15, made her protest a number of months earlier than Rosa Parks' comparable act of defiance turned a key second within the start of the trendy civil rights motion in the US.

Colvin "leaves behind a legacy of braveness that helped change the course of American historical past," her basis mentioned.

Colvin had been finding out Black historical past at school on March 2, 1955, when she was detained after she refused to surrender her seat to a white lady on a bus in Montgomery -- the identical southern US metropolis the place Parks' protest made headlines.

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"I remained seated as a result of the woman might have sat within the seat reverse me," Colvin advised reporters in Paris in April 2023.

"She refused as a result of...a white particular person wasn't supposed to take a seat near a negro."

"Folks ask me why I refused to maneuver, and I say historical past had me glued to the seat," Colvin mentioned.

Colvin was briefly imprisoned for disturbing public order. The next yr, she turned one in all 4 Black feminine plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit difficult segregated bus seating in Montgomery.

The case was profitable, impacting public transportation all through the US, together with trains, airplanes and taxis.

Colvin's position within the US civil rights motion was much less celebrated than that of Parks, who was already a key determine within the native chapter of the Nationwide Affiliation for the Development of Coloured Folks (NAACP) on the time of her arrest.

Parks' arrest triggered a year-long bus boycott in Montgomery that thrust civil rights chief Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to nationwide prominence.

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The civil rights motion led to important advances for Black folks within the mid-Nineteen Sixties -- ending authorized segregation and securing their voting rights.

Colvin, who was born in Alabama in 1939 because the eldest of eight sisters, could be ostracized from the civil rights motion when she turned pregnant out of wedlock.