Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice is a work of nonfiction by Phillip Hoose about a teenager whose courage helped end bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama. In March 1955, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat to a white passenger and was arrested and dragged off the bus, nine months before Rosa Parks took the same stand. Instead of being celebrated, Colvin was shunned by classmates and sidelined by community leaders. A year later she became one of the plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the federal case that struck down Montgomery's bus segregation laws. Drawing on extensive interviews with Colvin herself and illustrated with historical photographs, Hoose restores her place in civil rights history and explores why her story was overlooked. It won the 2009 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and received 2010 Newbery and Sibert Honors.