AL HR16

Alabama House Resolution mourns the death and celebrates the life of Claudette Colvin of Birmingham, a civil rights pioneer who died recently

At age 15, Colvin was arrested on March 2, 1955, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery—nine months before Rosa Parks' arrest

Colvin was a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle; her testimony at age 16 led to federal court rulings declaring Alabama's bus segregation laws unconstitutional, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on December 20, 1956

In 1990, New York Governor Mario Cuomo awarded her the MLK Jr. Medal of Freedom; she founded the Claudette Colvin Foundation to inspire youth service and co-authored the children's book "Claudette Colvin: I Want Freedom Now!"

In 2021, 66 years after her arrest, a Montgomery juvenile court expunged her record, restoring civil rights she had lost including the right to vote