Claudette Colvin : : Twice Toward Justice

Locations
Call Number: R Newbery Honor 2010, Y 921 Colvin, Claudette, Kids Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Social Activists / Colvin, Claudette
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown Kids Reference 0-week checkout	R Newbery Honor 2010	0-week checkout	Library Use Only
Downtown Kids Books 4-week checkout	Y 921 Colvin, Claudette	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Kids Books 4-week checkout	Kids Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Social Activists / Colvin, Claudette	4-week checkout	On Shelf

First cry -- Jim Crow and the detested number ten -- Coot -- "We seemed to hate ourselves" -- "It's my constitutional right!" -- "There's the girl who got arrested" -- "Crazy" times -- "Another Negro woman has been arrested" -- Second front, second chance -- Playing for keeps -- Browder v. Gayle -- Rage in Montgomery -- History's door.
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.

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True American Hero at 15 submitted by michrigan on March 24, 2017, 7:56pm There is nothing anyone can say to do justice to the life of this girl at the age of 15. Her name belongs above that of Rosa Parks in helping overcome race injustice in the South and all of The United States. Less than a year before Parks was arrested on December 2, 1955, Colvin underwent the same experience in a more harrowing way. She made it possible for Parks to start the movement to end segregation in Montgomery, Alabama and the rest of the country.

Claudette refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white person and knew she was within her rights by city law. It said you did not have to give up a seat if there were none others available in the front of the rear section of the bus reserved for blacks. That law was just ignored by the city and the drivers. An older black woman gave up her seat. Eventually police were called after some confusion about who had the authority and Colvin was arrested, handcuffed and dragged to jail. She was accused of disbeying the laws of segregation and assaulting a police officer. The latter charge was the only one upheld on appeal because the justice system did not want to allow a further appeal on segregation. But that was soon to come.

Parks was arrested, but stood up and was not handcuffed and not frightened as Colvin was by being put in jail. She was charged only with disturbing the peace, not breaking the segregation law. After a $10 fine was paid she was released. It had already been decided by the powers in the African American community that Claudette was not a good representative for the country to see as a representative of protest. She was too open in expressing her feelings. And probably just as important, she was younger and did not see the possible future consequences of her actions as Rosa Parks and other leaders did.

Claudette was at first a hero in the black community, but when she lost her case her friends and the leaders of the early Civil Rights movement in Montgomery turned their backs on her. Colvin was a good student and an avid churchgoer who stayed at church events all day Sunday. "How could anyone serve God on Sunday in less than an hour?" she said. "I was a serious prayer, asking for help in this and tat, and blessing about everyone I knew, but Delphine (her sister who died of polio at a young age) just whipped through the Lord's Prayer and jumped into bed."

Well this good religious girl got caught up in the swirl of the aftermath of her arrest and was so downhearted that she sought the help and sympathy of a man 10-years older. She soon was pregnant and that caused more people to turn their backs on her.

But the next step may have been her greatest contribtion. After Rosa Parks's arrest a bus boycott was organized and lasted about a year. It created a lawsuit that eventually broke segregation for good in this country. Eventually a lawsuit was filed against Montgomery challenging that segregated buses were unconstitutional as was ruled in 1954 for schools in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. Only women were found and allowed to testify in the case called Browder versus Gayle (the mayor). Men who testified would have been more severely condemned and fired from their jobs at the least. The case went to the Supreme Court of the United States and won. Colvin's testimony was the most important. As the lawyer Fred Gray said, "Claudette Colvin had more courage, in my opinion, than any of the other persons involved in the movement."

Yet victory in court was not the end. Violence erupted over integrated buses. "Violence and threats of revenge were everywhere in the first days of integrated buses...people came and set fire to the cars parked out in front of the church at 4 p.m. No one would let us out of the church until we were safe (at 4 a.m.), said Colvin. There were bombings at her church and three others as well as Martin Luther King's residence.

King's words to her were, "You're a brave young lady."