Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

Part 1, Chapters 1-2

Reading Check

1. State laws that legalized racial segregation in the South (Chapter 1)

2. “[T]o enforce the Jim Crow laws” (Chapter 1)

3. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) (Chapter 1)

4. Movie star Claudette Colbert (Chapter 2)

5. Polio (Chapter 2)

Short Answer

1. Claudette recounts the following memory: A white child asked to see her hands, and as they touched, he laughed. Claudette’s mother saw the boy and the boy’s mother, walked over to Claudette and slapped her for touching him. The boy’s mother nodded with approval. (Chapter 1)

2. Phillip Hoose describes how Black passengers had to enter the bus, pay the driver, leave, and re-enter through the back where they were allowed to sit. Sometimes the drivers would drive away after the passengers paid but before they could re-enter. Additionally, Black passengers were expected to give up their seats on command of the driver for white passengers. (Chapter 1)

3. In an interview, Claudette reminisces on how she was taught in school that “white people were better than Blacks.” She notes how she considered this to be a “mystery” since it was antithetical to biblical Christian messages such as “God loves everyone.” (Chapter 2)

4. In Pine Level, Claudette lived with her great-aunt and great-uncle. Here, she was close with her family and neighbors and enjoyed attending the one-room schoolhouse. (Chapter 2)

5. Some examples include not being permitted to try on clothes or shoes in the store, not being allowed to sit in the optometrist chair at the beginning of the day, not being able to put on a hat unless she wore a stocking first, and having to attend different shows (with the possibility that the show for Black attendees would be cut). (Chapter 2)

Part 1, Chapters 3-4

Reading Check

1. The conviction of Jeremiah Reeves (Chapter 3)

2. A lawyer (Chapter 3)

3. Colvin states that “[r]ebellion was on [her] mind that day.” (Chapter 4)

4. “It’s my Constitutional Right!” (Chapter 4)

Short Answer

1. Claudette enrolled in Booker T. Washington high school, one of the two public high schools for Black students. She recalls that most of the students were preoccupied with looking white, and even referred to each other with derogatory and racist language. (Chapter 3)

2. Claudette’s peer Jeremiah Reeves was sentenced to death twice (the first conviction was reversed). He was caught having sex with a white woman, who later claimed she was raped despite many public claims from the Montgomery Black community that the relationship was known and consensual. Police then tortured Reeves to elicit a false confession of raping several white women. The Black community of Montgomery was enraged, as white men were never given as harsh a sentence for raping Black women. Hoose notes that this event “became the first time many Black teenagers in Montgomery ever acted to address injustices outside their own personal problems.” (Chapter 3)

3. Miss Geraldine Nesbitt was Claudette’s English literature teacher. Claudette recalls how Miss Nesbitt challenged her way of thinking and gave her confidence in being proud of her appearance as well as in African American history. (Chapter 3)

4. Mrs. Hamilton was the pregnant African American woman who entered the bus during the altercation between police and Claudette. She also refused to give up her seat.

5. Claudette was arrested by two police officers, who put her in their police car, handcuffed her, and made rude comments to her as they drove her to jail. Instead of taking her to juvenile court, they took her to a women’s penitentiary, where she was held in a cell without receiving a phone call. Her mother and Reverend Johnson were able to release her on bail. (Chapter 4)

Part 1, Chapters 5-6

Reading Check

1. Boycott the buses (Chapter 5)

2. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Chapter 5)

3. Rosa Parks (Chapter 5)

4. With her winnings from the Miss NAACP Montgomery chapter contest (Chapter 5)

5. “I won’t straighten my hair until they straighten out this mess.” (Chapter 6)

Short Answer

1. Jo Ann Robinson was an English professor at Alabama State College who had experienced a similar humiliating experience on a Montgomery bus a few years before. Her experience stayed with her, and she started to interview Black passengers who were mistreated. She also held meetings to remove Jim Crow laws from buses; however, these talks came to no avail. (Chapter 5)

2. Two weeks before her trial, Claudette’s lawyer, along with NAACP leader Dixon and Martin Luther King, Jr. met with the police commissioner as well as the manager of the bus company to find a solution. Although the meeting was civil, the charges against Claudette were not dropped and the trial went ahead as planned. (Chapter 5)

3. Claudette’s lawyer, Fred Gray, saw Claudette’s case as an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of segregation laws; this is because Claudette was the only person thus far to plead “not guilty” to her charges. (Chapter 5)

4. “Claudette faced three separate charges: violating the segregation law, disturbing the peace, and ‘assaulting’ the policemen who had pulled her off the bus.” After listening to testimonies from both the officers as well as her fellow classmates on the bus, the judge ruled Claudette “guilty” on all three accounts. (Chapter 5)

5. In her appeal case with the Montgomery Circuit Case, Judge Carter dropped the charge that she broke the segregation law; this meant that her lawyers could not keep using this case to challenge segregation on a systematic level. (Chapter 6)

6. Mary Louise Smith was another young girl who refused to get up from her seat. She was arrested, jailed, and got out on bail. As had happened in Claudette’s case, the Montgomery leaders decided she was not the right person to be the boycott leader. (Chapter 6)

Part 1, Chapters 7-8

Reading Check

1. For “every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial” (Chapter 7)

2. When he had to give up his seat to a white passenger as a boy (Chapter 7)

3. 381 days (Chapter 8)

4. He felt that that victory would set a precedent for desegregating the buses, saying, “Why not go to court and sue the city of Montgomery and the state of Alabama, arguing that if segregated schools were unconstitutional […] then weren’t segregated buses?” (Chapter 8)

Short Answer

1. In December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus. Unlike Claudette, Rosa Parks stood up, walked into the police car unhandcuffed, charged with disorderly conduct. (Chapter 7)

2. Hoose describes Rosa as a well-known activist in the Montgomery community who “bridged classes.” She was light-skinned, “levelheaded, and safe.” (Chapter 7)

3. Several months after her arrest, Claudette became pregnant with a married man’s child. Claudette was confused about the situation, as she did not know how she was impregnated in the first place, but her family and boyfriend took the situation very seriously and supported her. Claudette notes that her mother “took over [her] life at that point” and they decided to keep the pregnancy a secret. (Chapter 7)

4. After being expelled from Booker T. High School for her pregnancy, Claudette moved to Birmingham to finish school; however, after learning about the bus boycott, she realized that she could simply take the GED exam in order to finish her qualification and still be a part of the activism movement in Montgomery. She returned to Montgomery after two weeks. (Chapter 7)

5. The Montgomery Improvement Association, led by Martin Luther King Jr., worked to run the boycott by instituting a donation-based carpool system so that people could still find transportation without using the buses. Even with the MIA carpool system, many people elected to show their solidarity for the boycott by walking to work. (Chapter 8)

6. Fred called Claudette to invite her to be a plaintiff in a class-action suit against bus segregation. She agreed, and six weeks after giving birth, she prepared for her trial. (Chapter 8)

Part 2, Chapters 9-10

Reading Check

1. The 14th Amendment (Chapter 9)

2. Martin Luther King Jr. (Chapter 9)

3. Browder v. Gayle (Chapter 9)

4. “[P]ressure from her employer” (Chapter 9)

Short Answer

1. The White Citizens Council wanted to keep Montgomery segregated. During the trial, the mayor and the city council joined the White Citizens Council. (Chapter 9)

2. Hoose notes that the city wanted to get two important pieces of information from the plaintiff: first, that segregated seating was never objected to previously, and second, that Martin Luther King Jr. was the root of all the problems. (Chapter 9)

3. Justices Lynne, Rives, and Johnson voted 2-1 in favor of the plaintiff to abolish segregated seating on Alabama’s buses. Johnson summarized the court’s reasoning, writing, “The boycott case was a simple case of legal and human rights being denied.” In the fall of 1956, the Supreme Court upheld this ruling, officially ending segregation in buses. (Chapter 10)