Fallen through the Cracks of History

After reading Claudette Colvin: Twice toward Justice, I thought about something I hadn't since childhood reading my history books for school. I always wondered how some of the most important people of history somehow fall through the cracks and the next person to come along to do the same thing gets the recognition. I guess that it could be the bias of the historian writing their slant on what happened but then how do they get by without even mentioning that person, even in passing? It seems to me that Claudette Colvin was a pretty significant figure in American history to conveniently left out and be replaced by Rosa Parks.

I don't know how I feel about Rosa Parks not taking the initiative to correct people when they viewed her and advertised her as one of, if not the first, African American woman to stand up to Jim Crowe Laws...

Kaylin

The Truth About Civil Rights

Throughout school, we are taught about the importance of Rosa Parks and her refusal to give up her seat on a bus. She is marketed as a visionary, and as the first person to stand up for what is right. I am a history major, and I have never been told how common it was for people to fight the Jim Crow laws. This makes me pretty angry, to be perfectly honest. I think that history books should be re-written, and they should include information about the other people who helped make progress in the Civil Rights movement. Reading this book makes me want to further investigate the Civil Rights Movement so that when I am a teacher, I can include the important information that is left out by so many.

Have You Ever Heard of Claudette Colvin?

I don’t know about you guys, but I had never even heard of Claudette Colvin until reading Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose because it was assigned to me. It shocks me that her story is not well known nationally and taught throughout American schools. It upsets me that her story is not common knowledge. I wish there was a way to let American’s know about such a heroic child in our country's history of the civil rights movement. This nonfiction story gives faith to young people to let them know that kids can make a difference too. It shows proof that kids can and have done things in the past to change history. I wish more students learned about Claudette Colvin in school because they can relate to her age. Rosa Parks is an American who everyone looks up to, and everyone knows who she is, but what about Claudette Colvin? Why was her story pushed aside?

Bridget McDonnell

Engaging and Informative Nonfiction for Young Adults (?)

I am only about half way through this week’s book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice at the time of this post. I’m not going to write about this book directly, but I wanted to post about an essay concerning nonfiction that I read in one of Marc Aronson’s books. (You might remember that we read one or two pieces authored by Aronson near the beginning of the semester.) Aronson’s essay, which is from the book Beyond the Pale: New Essays for a New Era, is titled “The Pursuit of Happiness: Does American History Matter?” I found this essay to be quite relevant to this week’s reading, and it raised some questions that I am eager to explore as I continue my reading of Claudette Colvin, as well as some questions that I think are worth discussing in class.

Aronson discusses the lack of proper teaching of American history to children and teens in schools. He cites statistics that show that 18 percent of fourth graders, 17 percent of eighth graders and 10 percent of seniors are “B” students in the topic of American history (76). This means that 90 percent of high school seniors have a below-satisfactory grasp on the history of their own country.

He also brings up the issue of the history books that children and teens are given in school. He says that one pitfall of these books is that they offer young people “neatly packaged history…There is no imagination in these books; the predictable facts, dates, photos, and maps tell the same old stories in essentially the same old ways” (79). He also says that authors often feel forced to fictionalize historical information in order to make it more palatable to the younger generation who have been so heavily exposed to popular culture. Aronson says this implies that “history in itself is boring,” (80) and that writers must first recognize what they feel is important in America’s history in order to introduce new creativity into nonfiction. If this does not happen, nonfiction for young people will continue to be drab and dull.

I am not far enough into Claudette Colvin to know if it achieves this new creativity that makes American history both exciting and informative for young adults to read. I would love to hear what others think about Claudette Colvin in regards to Aronson’s essay in your comments.

I’d like to end with a quote from the essay to spark some discussion. Aronson says, “If we were today to write a book for young people, if all of us in this room sat down together to create a book on the history of freedom, of the struggle for freedom, of the idea of freedom, in American history, I think we’d have a great deal of trouble deciding how to do it. We’d either think we were sanitizing, or we’d lose our way in the exceptions. It would be easier just to write a novel about a young boy at Valley Forge, a girl on the home front during the Civil War” (81).

So, I ask you all: Is Claudette Colvin able to cover the broad spectrum of the Civil Rights movement in the format in which it was written? Why do you think Aronson said that we would find it easier to write a novel rather than a history?


Susan Elliott