Getting to Know Claudette Colvin, Thank You Mr. Hoose

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice By Phillip Hoose

     There are so many reasons for young people and everyone else to read Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice [Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2009] by Phillip Hoose. Here are two: Claudette Colvin is an important person and Hoose tells her story well.

     Claudette Colvin lived in Montgomery, Alabama where, famously, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus. The date of Ms. Parks’ action: December 1, 1955. But on March 2, 1955, nine months before Ms. Parks’ arrest, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus and got arrested. A brave teenager!

     So we start by pondering why Claudette Colvin’s story is one that has not been widely told. Perhaps the tellings of Rosa Parks’ arrest filled up the unwritten quotient for discussions about women in history.

     Too many aspects of the Montgomery story, the work of Jo Ann Robinson (look her up), the arrest of Mary Louise Smith (look her up too), the case against Montgomery’s segregation on buses brought by five women (including Claudette Colvin) that ultimately led to the end of the practice, and the women who walked or found other ways to honor the Montgomery bus boycott, seem to get placed in the background, behind the men. We have wanted to place Martin Luther King Jr. and male leaders at the center of this history. When we include people like Claudette Colvin, we are forced to move the men a bit to the side. We then get a truer picture of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

     So I am grateful that Hoose puts Claudette Colvin’s story out there front and center. Along the way, we do also get to know Jo Ann Robinson and Mary Louise Smith. It is important that young people, and all of us, are introduced to these amazing people who seem to get pushed aside. Once we discover these people, we might then ask why we have not known about them before.

     And Hoose grounds the book in statements from fourteen interviews he did with Claudette Colvin. That act allows students to directly encounter a primary historical document in some depth. Hoose does a great job letting Ms. Colvin talk and tell her own story. He does place her direct comments in the context of his own well-written narrative, but he is generous in letting her speak. I am guessing he realized that, beyond getting history from a direct source, Ms. Colvin is also a great storyteller.

     We get to know Claudette Colvin well. We get to see the person who embodies the historical event. That becomes important. From Ms. Colvin’s telling, we learn that her working class background and her pregnancy deemed her unsuitable to be the face of the bus boycott. Ms. Colvin bravely sat and, in Hoose’s book, she tells her own story forthrightly with pride and with some anger. Still, she comes off as a gentle soul who acted and made a difference.

     As young people get to know this incredible person, they experience her as a human being. Seeing her humanity will allow young people to realize they share that humanity and they too can act.

      In addition, by allowing Ms. Colvin to emerge as a fascinating character Hoose engages the reader. I did indeed want to keep reading.

     Hoose weaves Ms. Colvin’s individual story into the bigger Montgomery Bus Boycott narrative. In Hoose’s telling, Martin Luther King becomes a supporting actor. This is important. We have a tendency to want to make Dr. King the civil rights movement when, in truth, the movement is made up of the actions of many, many people. Hearing about Claudette Colvin reminds us of those people.

     Mr. Hoose has a grand storytelling sense. The entire narrative moves briskly. We are drawn in. He provides rich detail that allows the narrative to contain life.

     And detail is different from information. Hoose uses sidebars to include the sort of information we might need to pass a history test (The NAACP, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, The Montgomery Improvement Association). The reader needs that information to better understand the story. In many history classes, the information becomes an end in itself and so we forget what we learn. In Hoose’s book, the context stands front and center. We can study that information and place it within a story. The information then takes on a meaning and we remember it.

     Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice is a wonderful book. It should be used in schools as a way to engage young people in rich, character-driven nonfiction and to let them know about important people who too often get left out of classroom conversation. I encourage adults to read this book as well. I know that I found it an engaging read. As with young people, I predict adults will find a power in Claudette Colvin’s story. Many will wonder, why they were never told about what this brave teenager did. Thank you Phillip Hoose for correcting that error and thank you Claudette Colvin for generously sharing your life.