Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice is a Past Due Tribute

"Rebellion was on my mind that day. All during February we’d been talking about people who had taken stands. We had been studying the Constitution in Miss Nesbitt’s class. I knew I had rights. I had paid my fare the same as white passengers. I knew the rule—that you didn’t have to get up for a white person if there were  no empty seats left on the bus—and there weren’t. But it wasn’t about that. I was thinking, Why should I have to get up just because a driver tells me to, or just because I’m black? Right then, I decided I wasn’t gonna take it anymore. I hadn’t planned it out, but my decision was built on a lifetime of nasty experiences." Excerpt from Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice.


One day in 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, Black fifteen year old Claudette Colvin refused to yield her seat to a white man in a Capitol Heights bus.  She was thinking of a school assignment and ignored the bus driver's order to give up her seat.  Police officers forcibly removed her from the bus and hauled her off to jail. This happened nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man.  Colvin's long due place in history is narrated in the book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip M. Hoose (released January 2009.) 

Hoose' very informative narrative about this forgotten incident also chronicles the plight of Black people of the era.  Black men and women sat in the back of the bus.  They could not try on shoes and instead had to draw their feet on paper to approximate the size.  The book also narrates the climate of 1955 Alabama.  Black activists initially backed Colvin, hoping to have a test case but dropped it apparently because Colvin was from the lower class and shortly after the incident, got pregnant. The NAACP did not think Colvin provided a reputable face for the civil rights movement.   A few months later, the organization backed Rosa Parks when she, too, refused to yield her seat to a white man.  This catalyzed a mass boycott of the public transportation system. Colvin later became one of four plaintiffs to challenge segregation laws in Browder v Gayle.  This was litigated all the way to the Supreme Court which, in December 1956, ruled segregation to be unconstitutional.

Hoose was awarded the 2009 National Book Award for this work. An award winning writer of young people's books, Hoose captured the segregationist climate of the times, Colvin's own narrative and the events unfolding at the time.  There are some narration of violence and rape which may be disturbing to preteens.  This book is written for adolescents and young adults. It is riveting as it is educational.  It especially captures a most important lesson for young people- the power of one in bringing about change.