African-American activist was marked by refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a bus in 1955, she died at the age of 86
The African-American activist Claudette Colvin, A civil rights pioneer in her country after refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a bus in 1955, she died at the age of 86, her foundation said on Tuesday (13). Colvin was 15 years old when he refused to give up his seat in the southern state of Alabama, several months before Rosa Parks staged a similar protest that became a defining moment in the birth of the modern civil rights movement in America. .
“For us, she was more than a historical figure. She was the heart of our family, wise, resilient and deeply connected to faith,” said the Claudette Colvin Foundation. “She leaves a legacy of courage that helped change the course of American history,” he added.
Colvin, in 2023, that, on that March 2, 1955, “as the bus went down Main Street, more and more white passengers got on, and the driver asked for the seats to be vacated”. “Two or three stops later, a police officer asked me what I was doing sitting there. I told him I had paid for my seat and that it was my constitutional right. I wanted to challenge him most of all, and I refused to get up.”
“The story kept me in my seat,” he said. This teenager’s boldness led to the abolition of segregation on public transportation in the southern United States.
*With information from AFP
