Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice: Chapters 1–4

by Phillip Hoose
Courageous and determined, teenager Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus and became a plaintiff in a landmark civil rights case. This nonfiction account celebrates an often unacknowledged American heroine.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Chapters 1–4, Chapters 5–8, Chapters 9–10
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. ordinance
    a statute enacted by a city government
    It also didn’t matter that the city bus law — or ordinance, as city laws are called — had said since 1900 that no rider had to give up a seat unless another was available.
  2. segregation
    a social system that provides different facilities for minority groups
    Together, the whole system of racial segregation was known as “Jim Crow.”
  3. humiliating
    causing embarrassment or awareness of your shortcomings
    But everything about riding a bus was humiliating for black passengers.
  4. exasperated
    greatly annoyed; out of patience
    The exasperated driver radioed police, who were waiting at the next stop to arrest them.
  5. justifiable
    capable of being shown to be reasonable
    The coroner ruled his death justifiable homicide, justifiable because the officer said Brooks had been resisting arrest.
  6. intimidating
    discouraging through fear
    The white judges, the intimidating police, the insulting drivers, and the crushing weight of all the years of custom and law were simply overwhelming.
  7. embolden
    give encouragement to
    The ruling allowed black students to anticipate a different future and emboldened a few of them to try to make it happen.
  8. degrading
    harmful to the mind or morals
    They said it in such a degrading way; they never said “please” or asked if we minded.
  9. congregation
    group that habitually attends a particular place of worship
    It shriveled the leg of one girl in our congregation and deformed the arm of a little boy.
  10. emulate
    strive to equal or match, especially by imitating
    Middle-class black girls would always try to separate themselves from dark-skinned girls like me and emulate white girls.
  11. racism
    the prejudice that one people are superior to another
    That was when I and a lot of other students really started thinking about prejudice and racism.
  12. retract
    formally reject or disavow
    By then, Reeves had retracted his confession, insisting he had been forced by police to make it.
  13. liberate
    grant freedom to; free from confinement
    I was going be like Harriet Tubman and go North to liberate my people.
  14. landmark
    an event marking an important historical change of course
    The children involved in the landmark civil rights lawsuit Brown v. Board of Education, which challenged segregation in public schools, in Topeka, Kansas, 1953.
  15. grievance
    an allegation that something denies some legal right
    I was done talking about “good hair” and “good skin” but not addressing our grievances.
Created on Sat Sep 14 00:11:08 EDT 2013 (updated Thu Jun 26 11:27:55 EDT 2025)

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