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Dec 07, 2018IndyPL_SteveB rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Indiana native Phillip Hoose won a well-deserved National Book Award for Children’s Literature for this biography of Claudette Colvin. Colvin was a 15-year-old high school student who took the same action that Rosa Parks did -- refusing to give up her seat on the bus -- but *9 months earlier* in 1955 – and on her own, without the backing of the NAACP’s attorneys, without any planning at all. She was just standing up for her rights, as she had learned them in school. Colvin was arrested and charged with violating the city’s segregation laws. She lost her case, but her story did not end. Rosa Parks’s action started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which has been credited with ending segregated buses in Montgomery. But in reality, Hoose points out, the boycott went on unsuccessfully for nearly a year. The segregation was ended instead by a famous Federal Court case: *Browder vs. Gayle*, where Colvin was the most important witness. While Rosa Parks and others became famous, Claudette Colvin did not. She moved to New York City and was largely forgotten until this biography. The book is based on interviews with Colvin (and a lot of other research) and is especially good at revealing the constant prejudice and daily personal threats against young black people in the 1950’s.