The Seat by the Window
The idea: the brave thing first is not always the thing remembered.
Read it
Who is in this book
- Tara a child of the Green Listens longest, speaks last
Every recurring character has a short tune, so you can tell who is on stage before a word is said. The tunes play only when you tap, and the Reading Access sound switch turns them off.
The Honest Page
Which parts of this story are on record, which are legend — and what does nobody know?
Record
- Claudette Colvin, born on 5 September 1939, was arrested in Montgomery on 2 March 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat. She was fifteen. Source
- She was convicted in juvenile court; on appeal two charges were dropped and the assault conviction stood. Source
- She was one of four plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the federal case that ended bus segregation in Montgomery. The Supreme Court affirmed the ruling in November 1956. Source
- Rosa Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955, nine months later, at forty-two. Source
- Phillip Hoose's book Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice won the 2009 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Source
- In 2021 a judge in Alabama granted her request to clear her juvenile record. Source
Legend
- That Rosa Parks was simply a tired seamstress who sat down on a whim. Parks was the local NAACP secretary and an experienced organiser, and the boycott had been prepared for. Source
Nobody knows
- Exactly what each leader said in the meetings about Claudette's case. No minutes survive; the reasons in this story come from later interviews and memoirs, which do not all agree. Source
Tara’s sentence
The case stops where Tara speaks. Write the sentence you would have said. It stays on this device.
Kept.
Your sentence lives on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Ring the hammer for someone
Pick this book for someone younger. The link carries only the book, and it will wait for them on the Green.