Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. After the end of the Civil War, the US government authorized a series of measures to help rebuild the Southern states, called Reconstruction. What were some of the measures of Reconstruction? How did Reconstruction lead to the establishment of “Jim Crow” laws in the South? What did these laws focus on and who did they target?

Teaching Suggestion: This question orients students with the historical precursor to Phillip Hoose’s account. The Reconstruction Era was largely considered to be a failure, as the measures to support the transition of Southern states from slave-based economies were abandoned after a decade. Furthermore, most Southern states resisted attempts to integrate fully and, as a result, passed a number of state laws that legalized the segregation of races in public spaces. Without the federal government’s removal of these local legislations, these codes, colloquially known as “Jim Crow” laws, became entrenched in the lives of Black communities living in the South and contributed to the Internal Prejudices in 1950s Black Montgomery. Hoose’s account follows Claudette and other civil rights leaders in defeating these racist laws 80 years later.

• National Geographic discusses the history of “The Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws.”
• The Jim Crow Museum shares a compilation of primary sources relating to daily life in the south for Black communities living under Jim Crow.

Short Activity

During the mid-20th century, many individuals fought for equal rights in the US as a part of the civil rights movement. Working in small groups, research and select one civil rights leader in order to share with the class. Use the following questions to guide your research:

• Who was this leader?
• What was this leader’s background?
• What type of approach did this leader use in order to fight for civil rights (i.e., violent or nonviolent)?

Finally, share your findings with the class, and reflect on the similarities and differences among these civil rights leaders and their approaches.

Teaching Suggestion: This Short Activity is an opportunity for students to research an important historical movement and explore the themes of Perseverance Through Hardship and Injustice and The Importance of Questioning The Status Quo within the context of group work. Depending on the age group of the class, students will most likely be familiar with Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks; however, Hoose’s text offers examples of lesser-known activists who were also pivotal in the civil rights movement. This short activity is also a good opportunity to introduce the idea of nonviolent activism in literature. In particular, Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience was a significant text that influenced both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent pacifist approaches. This question connects with the second Full Essay Assignment question.

• The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)’s website provides a thorough overview of different civil rights leaders. (Note: Claudette Colvin is not included on the list; this might be an interesting point to make during this Short Activity and again after the students finish reading the text.)
• The Truman Library provides a variety of resources for lessons on the civil rights movement; for example, this lesson focuses on violent versus nonviolent approaches (teacher-appropriate; not student-facing).

Differentiation Suggestion: For more advanced classes, the following question may be included in the Short Activity Prompt: Compare and contrast the different leaders’ approaches to the civil rights movement. Which leaders supported nonviolence? Which leaders supported a more violent approach? Where did these leaders draw their inspiration from?

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

Consider one of the author’s central arguments that segregation contributed to the impoverishment of Black communities in the United States. Given that every society has limited resources, how would separating groups of people make inequality more likely? What social or cultural factors would influence how resources are allocated? And how might segregation allow those factors to go unchallenged?

Teaching Suggestion: This question invites students to consider the central conflict of Hoose’s account: Segregation resulted in the unequal treatment of Black communities in the US. In this vein, the idea of “separate but equal” was not a reality for Black communities in the US, as separation/segregation inevitability devolved into further inegalitarianism. This Personal Connection Prompt may also be reframed as an in-class discussion. For further oratorial preparation, please see the Differentiation Suggestion.

Differentiation Suggestion: In order to build on students’ oratory skills, you may choose to convert this Personal Connection Prompt into an in-class discussion, in which students contemplate the following statement: Why does the segregation of communities make inequality worse? To help guide discussion, you might encourage students to consider the role of institutional biases.