“When it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it. You can’t sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, ‘This is not right.’” – Claudette Colvin
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Jane Addams Honor Book (Awards))
by Phillip M Hoose
Book Description
On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South.
Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.
Review
“Phil Hoose’s profile of the remarkable Claudette Colvin is MUST reading for anyone still imbued with hope. She is a lighthouse in a stormy sea.” — Studs Terkel, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Good War
“Today, thanks to Hoose, a new generation of girls and boys can add Claudette Colvin to their list of heroines.” — Christian Science Monitor
“This inspiring title shows the incredible difference that a single young person can make.” — Starred, Booklist
“Smoothly weaves excerpts from Hoose’s extensive interviews with Colvin and his own supplementary commentary.” —Starred, Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
“Hoose makes the moments in Montgomery come alive, whether it’s about Claudette’s neighborhood, her attorneys, her pastor or all the different individuals in the civil rights movement who paths she crossed . . . . An engrossing read.” —Chicago Tribune
About the Author
PHILLIP HOOSE’s distinguished nonfiction includes the National Book Award Finalist We Were There, Too!: Young People in U.S. History and The Race to Save the Lord God Bird, winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Nonfiction. He lives in Portland, Maine.
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