The Peridot's Black History Fact: Claudette Colvin, Civil Rights Pioneer

The Peridot's Black History fact is dedicated to Civil Rights pioneer, Claudette Colvin. On March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. Her arrest occurred nine months before the more widely known incident where Rosa Parks, the secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. Colvin was one of five plaintiffs in the first federal court case filed by civil rights attorney Fred Gray on February 1, 1956, Browder v. Gayle, to challenge bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama. In a United States district court, she testified before the three-judge panel that heard the case. On June 13, 1956, the judges determined that the state and local laws requiring bus segregation in Alabama were unconstitutional. The case went to the United States Supreme Court on appeal by the state of Alabama, and it upheld the district court's ruling on November 13, 1956. One month later, the Supreme Court affirmed the order to Montgomery and the state of Alabama to end bus segregation. The Montgomery bus boycott that lasted for 381 days was then called off. For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort, because she was an unmarried teenager who was reportedly pregnant at the time of her arrest. Claudette Colvin is 81 years old today and retired as a nurses aide in New York.