February marks the 50th Anniversary of Black History Month celebrations. This month, we recognize the courage, innovation, and lasting contributions of Black Americans whose leadership has shaped our nation’s history and culture. From Claudette Colvin’s courageous stand on public transportation that helped ignite the Civil Rights Movement to Gladys West’s groundbreaking work in developing Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, these contributions have strengthened connectivity, advanced mobility, and expanded economic opportunity for communities across the country. Transportation wants to honor the legacies of these recently deceased women by retelling their stories.
Claudette Colvin was born in 1939 and passed away on January 13, 2026. Her activism began in 1955, at age 15, when she was told by the driver to give up her seat to a white passenger. When she refused, she was arrested and later placed on probation for violating Alabama’s segregation laws. She remained dedicated to the fight for civil rights and became one of the four plaintiffs in the landmark Browder v. Gayle case, which declared segregated transportation unconstitutional in 1956.
Claudette was the first person to be arrested for this offense. Her individual protest inspired Rosa Parks and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to plan a refusal to give up her seat after Colvin’s arrest. In recent years, Claudette’s story graced headlines, and she finally received recognition for her courage as a teenager, unaware of the impact she would later have on the world. Today and every day forward, we acknowledge her legacy and its role in desegregating public transportation.
Gladys West was born in 1930 and passed away on January 17, 2026. Her upbringing on a farm, where her family worked as sharecroppers, taught her the importance of education. She aspired to a life outside farm work, and excelling in school earned her a scholarship to Virginia State University, where she pursued a career in mathematics. In the 1960s, she participated in an award-winning study that proved “the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to Neptune.” She later became the project manager for the Seasat radar altimetry project, the first satellite designed to observe the ocean. After programming an IBM 7030 Stretch computer, she and her team discovered it could perform calculations for geographic navigation. Her groundbreaking work in computer programming laid the foundation for what we now recognize as GPS. Because of her invention, we have accurate time- and location-tracking systems today, including bus-tracking apps like myStop.
The legacies of both women will continue to live on through our work to ensure everyone has a place on our transportation systems and that our technology can help them reach their destinations. We are proud to celebrate Black History as part of American History. As a transportation department, we recognize that fair and reliable transportation is essential to opportunity, economic growth, and quality of life. We remain committed to learning from the past, celebrating progress, and continuing the work toward a more inclusive and accessible transportation system for everyone.