Synopses & Reviews
2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work – Biography / Auto Biography
2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians
Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013
The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks examines her six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement
Presenting a corrective to the popular notion of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who, with a single act, birthed the modern civil rights movement, Theoharis provides a revealing window into Parks’s politics and years of activism. She shows readers how this civil rights movement radical sought—for more than a half a century—to expose and eradicate the American racial-caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice.
About the Author
Jeanne Theoharis is professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She received an AB in Afro-American studies from Harvard College and a PhD in American culture from the University of Michigan. She is the author or coauthor of four books and articles on the black freedom struggle and the contemporary politics of race in the United States.
Table of Contents
Introduction: National Honor/Public Mythology: The Passing of Rosa Parks
Chapter 1: "A Life History of Being Rebellious": The Early Years of Rosa McCauley Parks
Chapter 2: "It Was Very Difficult To Keep Going When All Our Work Seemed To Be in Vain":The Civil Rights Movement Before the Bus Boycott
Chapter 3: "I Had Been Pushed As Far As I Could Stand To Be Pushed":Rosa Parks's Bus Stand
Chapter 4: "There Lived a Great People":The Montgomery Bus Boycott
Chapter 5: "It Is Fine To Be a Heroine But the Price Is High": The Suffering of Rosa Parks
Chapter 6: "The Northern Promised Land That Wasn't": Rosa Parks and the Black Freedom Struggle in Detroit
Chapter 7: "Any Move to Show We Are Dissatisfied:" Mrs. Parks in the Black Power Era
Conclusion: "Racisim is Still Alive":Negotiating the Politics of Being a Symbol
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
Jeanne Theoharis on PowellsBooks.Blog
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