Civil Rights Pioneer Claudette Colvin Dies at 86...

Civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin has died. She was 86. Colvin died on the morning of Tuesday, Jan. 13, of natural causes, a spokesman for her family confirms to PEOPLE. "They're grieving her loss but remembering the legacy she left and hoping that through [her] foundation they can continue to live out that legacy," the spokesman, Ashley D. Roseboro, says. The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now! "While Claudette was a civil rights hero, they remember her as Claudette Colvin, the mother, the grandmother," Roseboro says. Colvin was 15 years old when, on March 2, 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus (nine months before Rosa Parks). On that date, a bus driver called police to complain that two Black girls were sitting near two White girls in violation of segregation laws, according to the Associated Press. While one of the Black girls moved toward the rear, Colvin refused and was arrested. "I said, 'I'm not getting up,' " she recalled to PEOPLE. "It felt as though Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder, and Sojourner Truth was pushing down on another. History had me glued to the seat." Following her arrest, Colvin was made a ward of the State and placed on indefinite probation, according to the Claudette Colvin Foundation's website. Colvin continued as a Civil Rights pioneer, fighting against segregated buses in Montgomery, Ala. She, along with three other Black female plaintiffs, Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, filed the landmark Browder v. Gayle lawsuit, challenging segregated bus seating, per the Supreme Court Historical Society. In 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court held that segregation on Alabama's public buses was unconstitutional. The victory effectively ended the Montgomery Bus Boycott by upholding a lower court's ruling that segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, and implicitly overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, according to the Supreme Court Historical Society. In 2021, an Alabama family court judge granted Colvin's petition to expunge her record. Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. She is survived by her son Randy as well as her sisters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her older son, Raymond, died in 1993. Her funeral will be scheduled in Birmingham, Ala., at a later date.