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Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (review)

Too long relegated to sidebars in discussions of Rosa Parks’ historic act of civil disobedience, teenager Claudette Colvin‘s significant contribution to the struggle for equal accommodation is presented in this biography that smoothly weaves excerpts from Hoose’s extensive interviews with Colvin and his own supplementary commentary. As Colvin’s voice dominates the presentation, readers learn firsthand why her arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger never became the crucial incident to spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott and, just as importantly, how the teenager felt about being passed over for what would become the very public role of racial activist. By shifting the focus away from the better-known adult participants, Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., Hoose encourages teens to empathize with an age peer, once dismissed as too “emotional” to withstand public scrutiny, who later testified in the federal lawsuit that would finally end discrimination on public transportation. Plenty of black-and-white photographs and well-deployed sidebars enhance the text, and annotated notes, as well as an index and bibliography, are included. Once readers have met Claudette Colvin, it will be difficult to consider the Rosa Parks story without also hearing this proud voice insisting, “But I made a personal statement, too, one that [Parks] didn’t make and probably couldn’t have made. Mine was the first cry for justice, and a loud one.” EB