Tag Archives: Civil Rights

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favourite Historical Personage to Read About

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Edit: Just so you all know, Blogger is being finicky about letting me comment again. I’m able to comment on a few blogspot sites, but most of them are giving me an error message. I will keep trying!

This is one of those questions that I’d give a different answer to every month or so depending on whose books I’m reading and what portions of history I’ve most recently studied.

A black and white photograph of Claudette Colvin in 1952, three years before she refused to give up her seat to a white person. She is wearing thick black glasses in this photo and a dark grey shirt. She is smiling faintly at the camera with her head turned on a slight angle. Her hair is neatly pulled behind her head.

Ms. Colvin in 1952, three years before she refused to give up her seat.

Most of the history classes I took in school covered the exact same stories about kings, wars, and presidents over and over again every year, so I try to study the cultures, people, and events they skipped over now that I’m an adult and can expand my knowledge of the world.

Lately, I’ve been reading about the life of Claudette Colvin

Everyone has heard about Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white person, but Ms. Colvin did it nine months before Ms. Parks did.

Because Ms. Colvin was a teenager at the time, the civil rights organizations of the time decided that they’d wait for a case involving an adult to challenge segregation on buses.

Whoever was chosen was going to be dealing with quite a bit of racism and hatred for speaking up, and they weren’t sure that Ms. Colvin was emotionally prepared for it.

I think she would have done a marvellous job, though, and should have been recognized for her courage from the beginning.

18 Comments

Filed under Blog Hops