Claudette Colvin
On March 2, 1955, at age 15, Colvin was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat for a white woman. Colvin was among the four plaintiffs in the civil rights case filed by civil rights attorney Fred Gray on February 1, 1956, challenging bus segregation in the city. On June 13, 1956, the judges ruled that the state and local laws permitting bus segregation were unconstitutional.
Aside from civil rights activism, Colvin also worked as a nurse aide. In October 2021, 66 years after the Montgomery bus saga, Colvin filed a petition in the family court in Montgomery County, where her case was processed in 1955, seeking to have the record of her arrest cleared. She insisted that justice was overdue and that clearing her record is in the interest of justice. The petition was also to acknowledge her integral contributions to the civil rights movement.
