Synopses & Reviews
2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work–Biography/Autobiography
2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians
Presenting a powerful corrective to the popular iconography of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who with a single act birthed the modern civil rights movement, scholar Jeanne Theoharis excavates Parks’s political philosophy and six decades of activism. Theoharis masterfully details the political depth of a national heroine who dedicated her life to fighting American inequality and, in the process, resurrects a civil rights movement radical who has been hidden in plain sight far too long. This revised edition includes a new introduction by the author, who reflects on materials in the Rosa Parks estate, purchased by Howard Buffett in 2014 and displayed by the Library of Congress in February 2015. Theoharis contextualizes this rich material — made available to the public for the very first time and including more than seven thousand documents — and deepens our understanding of Parks’s personal, financial, and political struggles.
Review
“Verdict: This meticulously researched book is for everyone; advanced middle school and beyond.” Library Journal
Review
“Theoharis submits a lavishly well-documented study of Parks’s life and career as an activist.” Publishers Weekly
Review
“Historian Theoharis offers a complex portrait of a forceful, determined
woman who had long been active before the boycott she inspired and who
had an even longer career in civil rights afterward.” Booklist
Review
“How Theoharis learned the true nature of this woman is a story in
itself. Parks always stood in the background, never volunteered
information about herself and eschewed fame. There were no letters to
consult; even her autobiography exposed little of the woman’s
personality. She hid her light under a bushel, and it has taken an
astute author to find the real Parks. Even though her refusal to give up
her bus seat sparked a revolution, Rosa Parks was no accidental
heroine. She was born to it, and Theoharis ably shows us how and why.” Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
Jeanne Theoharis on PowellsBooks.Blog
Two summers ago, as protests mounted across the country following the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed explained the large police presence at downtown protests to reporters: “Dr. King would never take a freeway."...
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