On March 2, 1955, a slim, bespectacled teenager refused to give up her
seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
Shouting "It's my constitutional right!" as police dragged her off to
jail, Claudette Colvin decided she'd had enough of the Jim Crow
segregation laws that had angered and puzzled her since she was a young
child. But instead of being celebrated, as Rosa Parks would be when she
took the same stand nine months later, Claudette found herself shunned
by many of her classmates and dismissed as an unfit role model by the
black leaders of Montgomery. Undaunted, she put her life in danger a
year later when she dared to challenge segregation yet again -- as one
of four plaintiffs in the landmark busing case Browder v. Gayle. Based
on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip
Hoose presents the first in-depth account of a major, yet little-known,
civil rights figure whose story provides a fresh perspective on the
Montgomery bus protest of 1955-56. Historic figures like Martin Luther
King, Jr., and Rosa Parks play important roles, but center stage belongs
to the brave, bookish girl whose two acts of courage were to affect the
course of American history.