Phillip Hoose's Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

Growing up in the South, specifically Alabama you know the name "Rosa Parks". You know what she did - refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and thus becoming the face of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts that would lead to the integration of the buses and serve as a vital part of the Civil Rights Movement.

But do you know Claudette Colvin?

Me neither. Not until I read Phillip Hoose's Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. This National Book Winner is a history book of approximately 100 pages, full of pictures and historical sidebars. The main thrust of the book, however, is the little-known story of the 15-year old who refused to give up her seat 9 months prior to Ms. Parks' landmark defiance. The story is told from historical accounts, as well as interviews with Ms. Colvin and others associated with her story, trial and the Civil Rights Movement.

What it seems to boil down to is that Ms. Colvin wasn't the ideal poster-child for the boycott and was thus, overlooked. The book didn't paint Ms. Parks and her contemporaries in a negative light, but Ms. Colvin does express her heart - that she was just as much a part of this great moment in history as the names we all study in school.

So what happened to her? She was a teenager, labeled "emotional". Additionally, she was pregnant when the bus boycott began, and an unmarried pregnant teenager was not the ideal face of the movement. Ms. Colvin, however was one of the plaintiffs in the landmark trial (that I had heard about from school) Browder vs. Gayle. It was in this trail that the Supreme Court determined segregation on the buses was unconstitutional.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice is an excellent read for all students. In an age of information, we know so little about what happened only a few short years ago. We see racism in our lives today all over the world and sadly we still see some of the "old hate" from the 1950s in the South. As George Santayana once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."