Download The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks djvu

This is an important book that will stand as the definitive biography of the brave woman whose statue was just unveiled in our Capitol, but I have some qualms about just whom the author, a well-regarded (and second generation)academic historian,is addressing. It purports to be a corrective to the popular view of Rosa Parks as a simple seamstress who just got tired one evening and refused to surrender her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus, thus leading to the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, the ascendancy of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. as its leader, and, on its heels, the groundswell of the civil rights movement. Parks, Theoharis asserts, had long been, and continued to be, an activist, and she deftly fleshes out an undisputed heroine of the movement. But, although the simplistic portrayal of the tired seamstress was for many years an element of the conventional mysthology, and remained so in books for children and elsewhere, it has now been accepted by scholars and serious readers for years that Parks had been, in fact, an active if quiet force in the local NAACP (an act of some courage in itself)and had, shortly before refusing to yield her seat, attended a workshop at Highlander School, a long-acknowledged influence on her development.
But if Theoharis set out to counter a widely-held misconception, she assumes too much knowledge on the part of her less academic readers. On several occasions she alludes without prior explanation to some event--- an earlier incident on a local bus involving teenager Claudette Colvin, an original plan for a one-day boycott following Parks's arrest, etc.---that may be familiar to serious scholars or informed laymen, but not to the more general reader. Although these are treated (really introduced) in each case only a few pages later, the original citation may confuse readers and have them shuffling pages or consulting the index.
Notwithstanding this occasional lack of continuity, Theoharis has captured the drama, historical context, and sheer inspiration of Rosa Parks's life, and while emphasizing and clarifying hder subject's role in the movement, gives full credit to other important participants who have not often received their just due. It is, on balance, a rich, well-researched, and stirring story about an engaged life.

This is a political biography of Parks, which disputes the superficial portrayal often given this hero of the Civil Rights movement. Contrary to most media treatment, Rosa Parks was a long-time activist for whom the decision to stay in her seat when asked to move on a Montgomery city bus in December 1955 helped ignite the Civil Rights movement and bring to worldwide attention and acclaim a young minister newly arrived in town, Martin Luther King, Jr. But Parks was no stranger to the struggle against segregation and racism that day. She had been active in Montgomery's NAACP chapter and traveled to an integrated education center in Tennesee earlier in the year for training and discussions in community organizing and peaceful resistance. (This center in Tennessee would come to some noteriety in the South as the supposed "Communist Training Center" attended by King).

The decision to stay seated on the bus that day was also not a risk-free decision, in many ways. Other African Americans had also resisted segregation on the city's buses before Parks, and had been roughly treated in response. African Americans arrested in the South were often subject to beatings, or worse, by police. Segregation resisters were threatened and harrassed, by physically and verbally. Some had their houses bombed. And given the White establishment's control of most businesses, economic pressure could be brought to bear on Civil Rights activists. In fact, Parks was to lose her job as a seamstress because of the bus boycott that followed her confrontation with the bus driver that day.

A year later the courts ruled that segregated buses were unconstitutional and public transportation became integrated. But economic and health problems continued for Parks, whose live-in mother required care and Parks' husband ultimately resigned his job as a barber at a military base.

Parks and her family moved to Detroit, where she continued her Civil Rights activism in her new city and throughout the nation. She traveled and spoke widely during the 1950's and '60's on the subject of Civil Rights and the African American struggle for equality. She attended the August 1963 march in Washington at which MLK gave his famous I Have a Dream speech. She lived in Detroit during that city's rebellion (or riot as it was labeled by the press) when many blacks and some whites were killed and property in the African American community was destroyed. Much of the cause leading to the violence had to do with what was largely a segregated housing situation. Despite it's being a northern city, Detroit presented many of the same problems for African Americans as the South. In the remaining decades of her life Parks continued to travel and speak on many issues of concern to the Civil Rights community, including apartheid in South Africa. She opposed the Vietnam War and the American government's support of various military dictatorships in Latin and South America in the 1970's and '80's.

Despite her public prominence, Parks has continued to be portrayed as having minor influence in the Civil Rights movement. Why is this so? There were a variety of reasons. One, her gender. Male black leaders were given or sought leadership roles in the movement and often attempted to marginalize female leadership or constrain it to certain roles. Two, her economic class, seen as lower class even in the African American community. Parks did not attend college. Even in Alabama and the Montgomery area, despite or because of segregation, a professional and middle class of African Americans, typically more cautious in their political approach, existed, which tended to overshadow the influence of less well educated blacks. Third, Parks herself was rather hesitant in interviews to reveal much about herself. Partly this was a protective reaction, honed early in life to avoid unnecessary conflict and reprisals from Whites in the South due to her activism. Related to this somewhat more personal cause is the fact that much of Parks' papers and personal information is currently inaccessible, as her Estate continues to be, in the years since her death in 2005, in dispute.

In all, the book is highly informative about Parks' life and values. Some parts of the book can seem repetitive--frequent and repeated references to Parks' economic struggles and attempts (by others) to have the NAACP and the wider Civil Rights movement recompense Parks for her significant and continued contributions to the cause, and by attempts by others, mostly male professionals, to minimize her role. This latter is especially a reaccurent theme throughout the book. Parks would eventually in the 1980's obtain regular employment in the congressional office of Representative Conyers, her local congressman.

At her death, Parks was celebrated by much of the public and official Washington as a non-confrontational spark of resistence, a courageous voice of peace and conciliation. According to the author, the softening or ignorance of Parks' actual life and struggles has helped serve the purpose of whitewashing the Civil Rights era from its controversial aspects and the hostility it engendered. Parks continued receiving hate mail into the '80's from those offended by her activism and role in challenging the social order of her time. As Parks believed, the process of change required continual viligence and confrontation. Hopefully this book will help bring to light for a new generation of readers and Americans the struggles of the past in helping create the more open and integrated America of the present.

I have been wavering on how to rate this book. It is filled with fascinating information, and when the author writes in her own voice, it's actually quite good. Sadly, most of the book is a stringing together of quotes from various resources without much synthesis—and many of the main points are repeated ad nauseam to the extent that they actually lose much of their meaning and import. If this had been a student thesis from my days as an academic, I would have demanded a total rework. Theoharis would have done well to invest in a good editor or work from a carefully constructed outline. Either, or preferably both, might have resulted in a work with more clarity and avoided the redundancies that made this book such a slog.