Most people recognize Rosa Parks as being the leader that sparked the bus boycotts of the South. But Parks was not the first African-American to refuse to give up her seat for a white passenger!
Claudette Colvin, a teenage girl in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white bus passenger months before Rosa Parks took part in her famous protest.
Claudette Colvin Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose retells Colvin’s own story and how on March 2, 1955, she decided she was tired of giving up her Constitutional rights. Colvin, who was 16 years old at the time, did not listen to the bus driver who yelled at her to move. She remained in her seat until police dragged her off the bus. She was arrested and put into a jail cell for a short time.
Before reading this book, I knew nothing about Claudette Colvin! Why was Colvin overlooked for her stand against bus segregation and Rosa Parks later honored and widely known for her protest that happened in December of 1955? After all, both Colvin and Parks had done the same exact thing!
Find out why Claudette Colvin was not considered “the first lady of civil rights” like Rosa Parks was by reading Claudette Colvin, Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose.
