Claudette Colvin

Starred review from February 2, 2009
In March 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks triggered the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., by refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger, a 15-year-old Montgomery girl, Claudette Colvin, let herself be arrested and dragged off the bus for the same reason; in 1956, Colvin was one of four plaintiffs in Browder
v. Gayle
, a landmark case in which Montgomery's segregated bus system was declared unconstitutional. Investigating Colvin's actions, asking why Rosa Parks's role has overshadowed Colvin's, Hoose (We Were There, Too! Young People in U.S. History
) introduces readers to a resolute and courageous teenager and explores the politics of the NAACP and bus-boycott leadership. Because Colvin had been tearful in the period following her 1955 conviction, when her classmates shunned her, she was deemed too “emotional” to place at the center of the bus boycott; by the time Parks assumed that position, Colvin was disgraced: pregnant but not married. Hoose's evenhanded account investigates Colvin's motives and influences, and carefully establishes the historical context so that readers can appreciate both Colvin's maturity and bravery and the boycott leadership's pragmatism. Illus. with b&w photos. Ages 10–up.

Starred review from September 2, 2024
Previous collaborators and National Book Award winners Colvin and Hoose reteam to relate the actions of a young Claudette Colvin (b. 1939) in reaction to segregation in Montgomery, Ala. Crisp text based in lived experience recounts how the protagonist “always asked big questions,” including, as a child, “Why do white people think they’re better than me?” Detailing an era in which “signs... told me where I could and couldn’t go,” first-person narration asks another question: “I wanted change. But what could I do?” Colvin soon found out, inadvertently becoming a civil rights pioneer when, at age 15, she refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman, saying, “It’s my constitutional right to sit here!” Vibrant illustrations from Jackson (Summer Is Here) depict characters past and present with precision, from Colvin’s act (which occurred nine months before Rosa Parks’s protest) to the Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. It’s a telling both personal and historical that reflects the urgency and determination of the civil rights movement via the perspective of one figure working urgently toward equality and justice. An author’s note concludes. Ages 4–8.