In 1955, Claudette Colvin refused to move from her seat to the back of the bus for sitting too close to white girls. At age 15, she was arrested, months before Rosa Parks became famous for doing the same thing.
Colvin, 82, asked an Alabama court in October to expunge her record from 66 years ago because she didn't want to be considered a "juvenile delinquent" anymore, she said.
On Thursday, a family representative made the court order public showing that Juvenile Court Judge Calvin L. Williams granted her request.
"I am an old woman now. Having my records expunged will mean something to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And it will mean something for other Black children," Colvin said in a sworn statement.
On March 2, 1955, a bus driver called authorities to complain about how two Black girls were sitting near two white girls toward the front of the bus, which violated segregation laws.
When police asked the Black girls to move to the back of the bus, only one did. Colvin, a 15-year-old high school student at the time, refused to move from her seat and was arrested, the police report said.
The case was sent to juvenile court because of Colvin's age, and records show a judge found her delinquent and placed her on probation "as a ward of the state pending good behavior." Colvin never got official word that she had completed probation through the ensuing decades, and relatives said they assumed police would arrest her for any reason they could.
Parks, a 42-year-old seamstress and activist with the NAACP, gained worldwide notice after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man on December 1, 1955. Her treatment led to the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott, which propelled the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. into the national limelight and often is considered the start of the modern civil rights movement.
Colvin said in a statement that she wants "us to move forward and be better."
"When I think about why I'm seeking to have my name cleared by the state, it is because I believe if that happened it would show the generation growing up now that progress is possible, and things do get better. It will inspire them to make the world better," she said.
Colvin never had any other arrests or legal scrapes, and she became a named plaintiff in the landmark lawsuit that outlawed racial segregation on Montgomery's buses.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
