Category World News

Claudette Colvin, who helped to ignite the modern civil rights movement in the US after refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus, has died aged 86.

Colvin was 15 when she was arrested on a bus in Montgomery, nine months before Rosa Parks gained international fame for also refusing to give up her seat.

Colvin died of natural causes in Texas, according to a statement from her legacy foundation on Tuesday.

Colvin was detained on March 2, 1955, after a bus driver called the police to complain that two Black girls were sitting near two white women in violation of segregation laws. Colvin refused to move when asked, leading to her arrest.

“I remained seated because the lady could have sat in the seat opposite me,” Colvin told reporters in Paris in April 2023.

“She refused because… a white person wasn’t supposed to sit close to a negro,” Colvin said.

“People ask me why I refused to move, and I say history had me glued to the seat,” she added.

Colvin was briefly imprisoned for disturbing public order. The following year, she became one of four Black female plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit challenging segregated bus seating in Montgomery.

The case was successful, impacting public transportation throughout the US, including trains, aeroplanes and taxis.

Colvin’s arrest occurred at a time of growing frustration over how Black people were being treated on Montgomery’s bus system. The arrest of Parks in December 1955 triggered the start of the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The boycott propelled the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr into the national limelight and is considered the start of the modern civil rights movement.

“She leaves behind a legacy of courage that helped change the course of American history,” the Claudette Colvin Legacy Foundation said in a statement.

‘Too often overlooked’

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed said Colvin’s action “helped lay the legal and moral foundation for the movement that would change America”.

Colvin’s role in helping to trigger the modern civil rights movement is often overshadowed by the actions of Parks, and Reed said her bravery “was too often overlooked”.

“Claudette Colvin’s life reminds us that movements are built not only by those whose names are most familiar, but by those whose courage comes early, quietly, and at great personal cost,” Reed added.

While Colvin’s arrest helped to bring an end to racial segregation in the US, there are concerns from civil rights groups that President Donald Trump is looking to roll back policies on social progress.

On Tuesday, the largest civil rights group in the US said that Trump was being deceptive in his claims that civil rights hurt white people.

In an interview from last week published by The New York Times, Trump said he believed civil rights-era protections resulted in white people being treated unfairly.

The comments came after Trump was asked whether protections that began in the 1960s with the passage of the Civil Rights Act resulted in discrimination against white men, according to the newspaper.

“It accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people – people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job,” Trump was quoted as saying.

“It was a reverse discrimination,” he said.

In response, NAACP President Derrick Johnson said Trump was “lying through his teeth”.

Here is where things stand on Wednesday, January 14:

Fighting

• A Russian missile and drone attack on a postal company terminal in Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv killed four people and wounded six, Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on the Telegram messaging app.
• Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said that a Russian long-range drone also struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire.
• Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Energy Mykola Kolisnyk said that continued Russian shelling on Tuesday caused an “even greater shortage” of electricity in Kyiv and that “almost 500 high-rise buildings are still without heat”.
• The Ministry of Defence in Moscow said Russian forces had launched a “massive strike against energy facilities used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces”, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
• The ministry also reported that Russian forces shot down 207 Ukrainian drones and 11 guided missiles in a 24-hour period, according to TASS.

• TASS also said that some supermarkets were closed in Kyiv due to the power outages. However, Kolisnyk said these reports were false.
• Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said Ukrainian Navy forces struck a Russian drone factory in Taganrog, in Russia’s Rostov region, causing a fire and “a series of loud explosions”.
• Rostov Governor Yury Slyusar wrote on Telegram that a woman’s body was found in a building after it was shelled by Ukrainian forces in Taganrog.
• A Ukrainian drone attack killed a man in Shebekino city in Russia’s Belgorod region, the regional civil task force reported on Telegram.
• Another Ukrainian drone attack killed a 45-year-old woman in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk, the Russian-installed regional government reported on Telegram.
• Ukraine’s DeepState military blog said that Russian forces advanced near Lozova in Kharkiv and Stepnohirsk in the Zaporizhia region.

Black Sea attacks

• Drones struck two oil tankers in the Black Sea on Tuesday, including one chartered by US oil giant Chevron, the companies involved said, as they sailed towards a terminal on the Russian coast.
• “All crew are safe, and the vessel remains stable. It is proceeding to a safe port, and we are coordinating with the ship operator and relevant authorities,” Chevron said of the damaged chartered tanker.
• Reuters reported that both ships were en route to Russia’s Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka terminal, a loading point for about 80 percent of Kazakh oil destined for international markets, as well as some Russian crude oil, according to multiple unnamed sources.
• Кazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy had said earlier on Tuesday that it reduced oil shipments through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) marine terminal in December because of drone attacks and adverse Black Sea weather conditions.

Politics and Diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has nominated Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s first vice prime minister, for the post of defence minister, MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak wrote on Telegram.
• Ukrainian lawmakers on Tuesday voted against naming outgoing Defence Minister Denys Shmyhal as energy minister after Zelenskyy proposed him for the position.

Regional Security

• Germany indicted two Ukrainians linked to an alleged plot, on behalf of Russian spy services, to detonate packages while they were being transported across Europe, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
• Russia said it had summoned Poland’s ambassador to protest over the detention of a Russian archaeologist and demand that he be immediately released instead of extradited to Ukraine.

Uganda holds elections on Thursday, with President Yoweri Museveni hoping to extend his four decades in power.

Supporters of his main opponent, musician Bobi Wine, allege harassment and intimidation.

So, what’s at stake for one of the world’s youngest populations?

Presenter:

Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Robert Kabushenga – host of The Bad Natives podcast

Alex Vines – Africa programme director at the European Council on Foreign Relations

The administration of United States President Donald Trump will end temporary deportation protections and work permits for some Somali nationals in the US, authorities say.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Tuesday that the Trump administration was ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which shields migrants from deportation to countries where it is deemed unsafe to return and grants temporary work authorisation, for Somalis living in the US.

“Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status,” Noem said in a statement. “Further, allowing Somali nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interests. We are putting Americans first.”

The decision, which is expected to affect about 1,100 people, is likely to face legal challenges.

The Somali community has become a frequent target of the Trump administration. The US president has called Somalis “garbage” and depicted them as criminals.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has lashed out at Somalis in the US, alleging large-scale public benefit fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community, the largest in the country, with about 80,000 members.

Trump has threatened to strip any naturalised Somali or foreign-born person of their US citizenship if they were convicted of fraud, as he continued his attacks on the Somali community.

“We’re going to revoke the citizenship of any naturalised immigrant from Somalia or anywhere else who is convicted of defrauding our citizens,” Trump said on Tuesday.

The administration has additionally cut off Minnesota’s access to federal childcare assistance and surged immigration enforcement agents to the state, home to a sizeable Somali population, prompting widespread anger and condemnation from local and state officials over aggressive immigration raids.

Heavily-armed agents have broken car windows and detained people, used frequent force against protesters, and asked residents for proof of citizenship, drawing concerns from civil liberties groups.