Spotlight On: Black History Month (Claudette Colvin)

In honor of Black History Month, I thought that I would spend February highlighting books that honor that history...and that you should read!

Today's entry is:

Title: Claudette Colvin: Twice toward justice
Author: Hoose
Genre: Biography
Pages: 160
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars!

This is a MUST READ book about an important young woman, that is unfortunately often neglected in the history books. On March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin, a teenager fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South.

Hoose has written a well-researched and engaging biography of Ms. Colvin, based in no small part on interviews with her. It won the 2009 National Book Award, was a Newbery Honor winner, a YALSA Excellence in Non-Fiction finalist, and a Sibert Medal Honor book...just to name the "big" ones. Definitely time well spent getting to know this amazing young woman!