Phillip Hoose Sets the Record Straight on the Montgomery, Alabama, Bus Boycott

Jennifer M. Brown--Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 3/3/2009

TeachingBooks.net resources on this interview »»»

Listen to Phil Hoose introduce and read from Claudette Colvin

Everyone knows the story of Rosa Parks, the African-American woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, AL, on December 2, 1955. But someone else took that brave stand nine months before Parks did: 15-year-old Claudette Colvin. Colvin first came to author and historian Phillip Hoose's attention while he was working on his book, We Were There, Too!: Young People in U.S. History (Farrar, 2001). He learned that there was a teenager who had done precisely what Rosa Parks did, also in Montgomery, AL, and had been arrested. So why didn't the bus strikes begin then? What happened between Claudette Colvin's courageous act and Rosa Parks's stand that solidified the move to boycott? And how did Colvin, at age 15, have the courage to take a position that would pave the way for one of the most important chapters in the history of the Civil Rights Movement? Here Hoose talks about how he set out to answer those questions, and his book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, 2009).

When did you first consider Claudette Colvin as a subject who merited her own book?
We Were There, Too! took me six years to research and write. By the time I got to the Civil Rights movement, I was in my fifth year. I sent out an all-points bulletin, and it was easy to find stories of young people who contributed to the movement. As Dr. King said, "The blanket of fear was lifted by Negro youth." There was this 15-year-old girl who took the same stand almost a year earlier than Mrs. Parks had, and who was treated quite roughly—dragged backwards by her wrists off the bus, handcuffed, … and jailed. [The African-American lawyer who defended Colvin, Fred Gray,] had the courage to fight the charges, and later, in 1956, he participated in a trial [that fought the constitutionality of the bus segregation laws, with Colvin as a key witness]. That case—Browder v. Gayle—should have been famous. The idea that someone could have had such enormous courage at such a young age is remarkable, and I wanted to find her.

You waited a long time, four years, for Colvin to allow you to contact her. 
She was very good at remaining, as she called it, "in voluntary exile." She lived in the Bronx and had an unlisted phone number. I couldn't find out how to write to her for maybe a year. Then I read an article in which she'd been quoted, so I called the reporter and asked him to relay a message to her, and the message was, "Would you talk to me about doing a book together on your early life?" I left that message once or twice a year, every year for four years. Finally in the fall of 2006, I came home one night and the answering machine was blinking. I picked it up, it was the reporter, and he said, "Claudette said she'll talk to you. Here's her number. Good luck."

She has such a keen memory, of smells and sounds, the heat and humidity, the way places like the jail cell or the bus looked and felt. Did she keep a journal? 
No, I think she just has a great memory, a narrator's memory. Of course, some traumatic things happened to her, which would have heightened the senses. She said the worst sound she ever heard was a jailer's key in the lock—even as an adult she's had nightmares about that sound.

Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks were well acquainted, as a result of Colvin's refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus. Do you think that made it easier or harder for the teenaged Colvin to accept that Parks became the symbol of the boycott? 
I think Claudette was pretty ambivalent about it when she found out that Rosa Parks had been arrested and was now appearing as the face of a mass bus protest. As [Colvin] said, in the interview with me, she was happy that at last the community was organizing and getting ready to do something. On the other hand, she thought, "Hey, didn't I do that just a few months before?" Rosa Parks was more acceptable to more people as a symbol at that time.

Do you think that our society today is more receptive to appreciating the role Colvin played?
Yes I do. I've was in Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama with Claudette last month and [participated in] a series of interviews over the last [several] weeks, and I'm amazed by the interest and the readiness for this story—that is, for the story of the famed Montgomery boycott to be completed, to be adjusted, to be corrected.

I think many people know there was a teen who refused to give up her seat before Rosa Parks did; in the good histories, she's mentioned, but always in contrast to Rosa Parks, and often followed by a string of adjectives [characterizing her as] profane and emotional, unqualified to lead the movement. How would that feel? People are ready for a fuller story of that episode in American history, one that gives Claudette her due and her rightful place within it, and presents her as a human being with nuance and feeling.

Why is it important for young people to know Claudette Colvin's story? 
First of all, young people need to know the truth. This is an important chapter in U.S. history. The story as it's now widely known, the Rosa Parks story, is incomplete—a very important character is left out.

Secondly, it's great that young people have a role model their own age, someone who did something so important. At that time Rosa Parks was 42; Dr. King was an activist in his late 20s. Claudette Colvin’s story inspires young readers ask themselves what they would have done, could have done. I think you're most idealistic and most righteous in your middle teens—and Claudette was both. Many adults [at that time] would complain about unfair treatment and then go back to work the next day. She'd had enough with what she thought was hypocrisy.  

Listen to Phil Hoose introduce and read from Claudette Colvin

TeachingBooks.net resources on this interview »»»