The Fight for Justice

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice seems to be first and foremost a story about the beginnings and successes of the Civil Rights movement. It is particularly interesting for its presentation of the pre-Rosa Parks and pre-Montgomery boycott nature of the Civil Rights movement. Apparently, members of the Montgomery NAACP had opposed bus segregation for some time and felt that it was a particularly egregious form of segregation. The NAACP had been against it for the entire twentieth century, up to the 1950s, when they helped to end it. Further, many members of the Montgomery NAACP were interested in provoking a reaction from the city in order to make blacks look like the victims of oppression. Indeed they were, but many will be surprised that, say, Rosa Parks's resistance was not spontaneous but planned out in advanced after Claudette's spontaneous resistance.

The book also proceeds through...