Claudette Colvin, early US civil rights figure, dies aged 86

Claudette Colvin, arrested at 15 in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery and later a plaintiff in the Browder v. Gayle case that helped end segregation on public buses, has died at 86, her family spokesperson said.

Claudette Colvin, a US civil rights pioneer, has died at age 86. Her death was confirmed by Ashley Roseboro, a spokesperson for her family and the Claudette Colvin Foundation. She died under hospice care in Texas. As a 15-year-old in Montgomery in 1955, Colvin refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman and was arrested. Key facts: - Colvin was arrested in 1955 at age 15 after refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, and she was reportedly dragged off the vehicle by police. - The incident occurred nine months before Rosa Parks' more widely publicized refusal in December 1955. - Colvin said she felt inspired by abolitionist figures she had studied in school. - She became one of the plaintiffs and a principal witness in Browder v. Gayle, the federal case that led to the 1956 US Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transit. - She lived for decades largely out of the public eye, working as a caregiver and nurse's aide while raising a family as a single mother. - In recent years her juvenile arrest record was expunged, her family spokesperson said. Summary: Colvin's early act of civil disobedience helped lay groundwork for legal challenges to Jim Crow bus rules and is now more widely acknowledged. Her death closes a chapter on a figure who was long overlooked by history. Undetermined at this time.