Book Review: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

"Claudette had lit the fuse to a powder keg of protest...” p. 65

Stars: 4/5

I stumbled upon this paperback when helping my 12 year-old daughter find age-appropriate, non-fiction books for a school assignment. After reading the text on the back cover, I was amazed that I had never heard of Claudette Colvin. Considering the book was written for young readers, I quickly searched for other books on Claudette Colvin; specifically ones written for adults. My search yielded another amazing fact: not much is written about Ms. Colvin and her claim to history. After reading this book, you'll gain some insight as to why that is. Hoose, with the help of Colvin, has produced a gem.

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The Lasting Impact of a Civil Rights Icon's Murder

In the 44 days that his brother and two other young civil rights workers were missing in Neshoba County, Mississippi, 12-year-old Ben Chaney was quiet and withdrawn. He kept his mother constantly in sight as she obsessively cleaned their house, weeping all the while.

Bill Eppridge, a Life magazine photographer, arrived in Neshoba County shortly after the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam on August 4, 1964. Inside the Chaney home in nearby Meridian, Eppridge felt that Ben was overwhelmed, "not knowing where he was or where he should have been," he recalls. "That draws you to somebody, because you wonder what is going on there."

On August 7, Eppridge watched as the Chaney family left to bury their eldest son. As they awaited a driver, Fannie Lee Chaney and her husband, Ben Sr., sat in the front seat of a sedan; their daughters, Barbara, Janice and Julia, sat in the back with Ben, who hunched forward so he'd fit.

Eppridge took three frames. As he did so, he could see Ben's bewilderment harden into a cold stare directed right at the lens. "There were a dozen questions in that look," Eppridge says. "As they left, he looked at me and said, three times, 'I'm gonna kill 'em, I'm gonna kill 'em, I'm gonna kill 'em.' "

The frames went unpublished that year in Life; most news photographs of the event showed a sobbing Ben Chaney Jr. inside the church. The one on this page is included in "Road to Freedom,"a photography exhibit organized by Atlanta's High Museum and on view through March 9 at the Smithsonian's S. Dillon Ripley Center in Washington, D.C., presented by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Chaney, now 56, cannot recall what he told Eppridge in 1964, but he remembers being livid that his mother had to suffer and that his father's generation had not risen up years before so that his brother's generation wouldn't have had to. "I know I was angry," he says.

read the entire article here

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article By Hank Klibanoff, Smithsonian magazine, December 2008

more info on the Mississippi murders of of Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney

Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956–1968

For those in Atlanta or those who will be in Atlanta over the summer


Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956–1968
High Museum of Art - Atlanta
June 7 – October 5, 2008

For more information, click here