Claudette Colvin
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Jane Addams Honor Book (Awards))
Claudette Colvin
Phillip M Hoose
"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 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.Claudette Colvin is the 2009 National Book Award Winner for Young People's Literature and a 2010 Newbery Honor Book.

Book Details

Genre: 

  • Biography
  • Educational
  • Nonfiction

Age Level: 

  • 12 and up
Profile Picture

Twice Toward Justice is a true story about a teenage girl named Claudette Colvin. It's a moving story of a teenage girl who not only dreams of justice but does everything in her power to make it happen for not only herself, but for others. Claudette was a strong willed teenage girl who knows right from wrong. Ever since she was little she'd hear adults, including her parents, complain about all the injustices that people of color suffer. A main part of the injustices were on the buses.

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