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srobertsp's review against another edition
5.0
This political biography should be required reading. It is an excellent lesson in the deep-seated, just anger against white oppression in this Civil Rights icon, who has been sanitized by white America, as has Dr. King.
''Held up as a national heroine but stripped of her lifelong history of activism and anger at American injustice, the Parks who emerged was a self-sacrificing mother figure for a nation who would use her death for a ritual of national redemption.'' (Jeanne Theoharis)
Rosa Parks was as much a follower of Malcolm X as she was of Martin Luther King Jr., maybe more.
''Held up as a national heroine but stripped of her lifelong history of activism and anger at American injustice, the Parks who emerged was a self-sacrificing mother figure for a nation who would use her death for a ritual of national redemption.'' (Jeanne Theoharis)
Rosa Parks was as much a follower of Malcolm X as she was of Martin Luther King Jr., maybe more.
noskills's review
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Considering that modern American education places an outsized importance on that one afternoon in 1955, dispelling the mythology around Parks at an early age is sadly necessary. The truth is the lifelong activist was more akin to a Zelig, participating in countless freedom struggles across the decades. Along the way, both the benefits and costs of this life are made clear. Parks’ tireless pursuit of justice remains inspiring, albeit for more nuanced reasons.
lauraellis's review against another edition
4.0
This review will not do this book justice.
I knew that Rosa Parks was a brave woman from the time I first learned about her. I had learned that she was secretary of her local NAACP chapter, but I did not understand what that meant. I knew nothing about her lifelong commitment and work for civil rights, as a "race woman" who wanted equality for herself -- and for everyone else. In this book, which is a political biography and thus focuses on Mrs. Parks' political life, she traces Mrs. Parks' years of work as a political organizer and member of the NAACP before she made that famous bus ride, her work supporting the boycott following the bus ride, the consequences to herself and her family (they had to leave Alabama and spent a decade without steady work), and her continuing work in the 1960s and 1970s with people, particularly younger people, across the spectrum, including those in the Black Power movement. She also examines Mrs. Parks' work in Detroit fighting racism in the north. I learned a lot of mid-20th century history about civil rights that does not get discussed or remembered in the public sphere, and I want to learn more, particularly about the Black Power movement. In addition to examining racism, the author examines how class and gender affected the movement, Mrs. Parks' role in the movement, and people's perception of her role in the movement.
The thing that irks the author (although she didn't put it in these words) is that everyone assumes that because Mrs. Parks was quiet, gentle, modest, and unassuming (which she undoubtedly was), she was also passive, meek, mild, and someone who took one spur-of-the-moment action and did nothing else. Mrs. Parks was persistent, dedicated, hard-working, steadfast, and very clear-eyed about the persistence of racism. And she was an activist. She was not someone who was acted upon, but an actor.
The other thing that the author makes very clear is that Mrs. Parks' life, particularly her experiences as a black woman and a political activist and organizer, prepared her for her decision to remain seated. It was those experiences, along with her strength of character, that gave her the strength to remain seated when it would be so much easier to stand, and to see it through, at a considerable cost to herself and her family.
If she could, Mrs. Parks would be speaking out about Katrina, about the curtailment of voting rights, the widening income gap, and the death of Trayvon Martin.
Read the book.
I knew that Rosa Parks was a brave woman from the time I first learned about her. I had learned that she was secretary of her local NAACP chapter, but I did not understand what that meant. I knew nothing about her lifelong commitment and work for civil rights, as a "race woman" who wanted equality for herself -- and for everyone else. In this book, which is a political biography and thus focuses on Mrs. Parks' political life, she traces Mrs. Parks' years of work as a political organizer and member of the NAACP before she made that famous bus ride, her work supporting the boycott following the bus ride, the consequences to herself and her family (they had to leave Alabama and spent a decade without steady work), and her continuing work in the 1960s and 1970s with people, particularly younger people, across the spectrum, including those in the Black Power movement. She also examines Mrs. Parks' work in Detroit fighting racism in the north. I learned a lot of mid-20th century history about civil rights that does not get discussed or remembered in the public sphere, and I want to learn more, particularly about the Black Power movement. In addition to examining racism, the author examines how class and gender affected the movement, Mrs. Parks' role in the movement, and people's perception of her role in the movement.
The thing that irks the author (although she didn't put it in these words) is that everyone assumes that because Mrs. Parks was quiet, gentle, modest, and unassuming (which she undoubtedly was), she was also passive, meek, mild, and someone who took one spur-of-the-moment action and did nothing else. Mrs. Parks was persistent, dedicated, hard-working, steadfast, and very clear-eyed about the persistence of racism. And she was an activist. She was not someone who was acted upon, but an actor.
The other thing that the author makes very clear is that Mrs. Parks' life, particularly her experiences as a black woman and a political activist and organizer, prepared her for her decision to remain seated. It was those experiences, along with her strength of character, that gave her the strength to remain seated when it would be so much easier to stand, and to see it through, at a considerable cost to herself and her family.
If she could, Mrs. Parks would be speaking out about Katrina, about the curtailment of voting rights, the widening income gap, and the death of Trayvon Martin.
Read the book.
justabean_reads's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
4.5
It's the third book I've read that extensively covers the bus boycott, the other two being MLK's Stride Towards Freedom and the middle grade book about Claudette Colvin. Given that, the actual boycott section was probably the least interesting part of the book, though it covered it well as far as I could see, and drew out a lot of the class issues that played into the organisational conflicts.
More interesting to me were the sections before about Parks' history with the NAACP, working to organise voter registration and combat legal discrimination. (I must read more about Garveyism, as I keep running into it, but don't know much about it.) Parks spent well over a decade travelling all over Alabama recording accounts of rape victims and family members of lynching victims, usually with no justice to be found, and was pretty well D.O.N.E. by the time she got to the mid '50s. What kept Parks going was the community of activists to which she belonged, which gave me a whole other list of people I'd like to read more about.
After the boycott, she more or less got caught in a movement power play, and with no real support from any side had to move north. Where she continued her activism, now shading more towards the Malcolm X and later Black Power side of things, as well as continuing to work towards electing more black representatives. The book talk a lot about how her later work gets ignored because it doesn't fit into the easy (and therefore completed) victory story of the boycott, but there's also not really one clear narrative of her work in Detroit.
Which leads to my structural nitpick about the book. It's roughly divided into three sections: before the boycott, the boycott, and after the boycott. Within each section, the layout is more thematic than chronological. The author follows a series of overlapping elements (for example voter registration, Parks' marriage and Raymond's activism, other desegregation efforts, Parks' position in the NAACP) though chronologically on its own, then jumps to the next one and follows it through. The over all effect is that the topic lead forward in time, but the amount of overlap often led me to feel confused about when things were happening in relation to each other, and also led to a lot of repetition. I'm not sure how that could have been avoid though.
However, it was otherwise an entirely worthwhile read, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to read about a type of activism that's more focused on steady, low-profile community building than on the big flashy moments. Also the author is really grudgy about how other authors are Wrong, which I always enjoy. (I would say the intro to the revised edition may be skipped.)
More interesting to me were the sections before about Parks' history with the NAACP, working to organise voter registration and combat legal discrimination. (I must read more about Garveyism, as I keep running into it, but don't know much about it.) Parks spent well over a decade travelling all over Alabama recording accounts of rape victims and family members of lynching victims, usually with no justice to be found, and was pretty well D.O.N.E. by the time she got to the mid '50s. What kept Parks going was the community of activists to which she belonged, which gave me a whole other list of people I'd like to read more about.
After the boycott, she more or less got caught in a movement power play, and with no real support from any side had to move north. Where she continued her activism, now shading more towards the Malcolm X and later Black Power side of things, as well as continuing to work towards electing more black representatives. The book talk a lot about how her later work gets ignored because it doesn't fit into the easy (and therefore completed) victory story of the boycott, but there's also not really one clear narrative of her work in Detroit.
Which leads to my structural nitpick about the book. It's roughly divided into three sections: before the boycott, the boycott, and after the boycott. Within each section, the layout is more thematic than chronological. The author follows a series of overlapping elements (for example voter registration, Parks' marriage and Raymond's activism, other desegregation efforts, Parks' position in the NAACP) though chronologically on its own, then jumps to the next one and follows it through. The over all effect is that the topic lead forward in time, but the amount of overlap often led me to feel confused about when things were happening in relation to each other, and also led to a lot of repetition. I'm not sure how that could have been avoid though.
However, it was otherwise an entirely worthwhile read, and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to read about a type of activism that's more focused on steady, low-profile community building than on the big flashy moments. Also the author is really grudgy about how other authors are Wrong, which I always enjoy. (I would say the intro to the revised edition may be skipped.)
porshea's review
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
What we know about Rosa Parks is challenged and illuminated in this brilliant biography which shines a light on her intersectional activism — a history much diluted within the grand narrative of the Civil Rights movement.
Think a second about what you know about Rosa Parks. You probably know that she’s from Alabama, worked as a seamstress, and about her protests as part of the Montgomery bus boycott — a whole of her activist life as summed up in many of our school history books. If you’ve probed her history a bit deeper, you may have learned of her work with the NAACP before the boycott and how she helped build a case against Recy Taylor’s rapists. And, if you’re like me, you may have heard conjecture that Rosa Parks’ refusal to get up from her seat on that most revered day was orchestrated by the NAACP and not the narrative that she was a tired woman who wanted to rest her feet. That Claudette Colvin had protested in this way before Rosa had but was dismissed as a representative for the movement based on respectability standards that the NAACP enforced. Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert, the authors of this biography, would have you know that much of this is true. However, unlike what we’ve been taught, these facts fail to touch even a third of the rich and rebellious life that Rosa Parks led.
It is incredibly tempting to present the information shared within this tome as did you know questions, chronicling the profound persistence and patient impatience with which Parks pursued racial, sexual, and economic justice. Justice she pushed for long before and after the activism she became famous for on the behalf of people like her and those she would never meet. What stands out most in the biography is the way she persevered in this advocacy most of her life through fear and hopelessness that white supremacy enforces to keep people from doing so. She was fastidious in noting that her success in the bus boycott was due to the years of work put in by herself and others. Rosa Parks was not the first person to refuse to be moved on the Montgomery buses — the instance she is most famous for was not even the first time she had protested similarly — nor are her mug shots or pictures on the bus from that particular day. Black people refusing to be moved when bus drivers forced Jim Crow laws were so ubiquitous in the city that the cops who arrested her were surprised when the driver of her bus pressed charges – an ordeal that did not garner any interest from the press. People like Hilliard Brooks died protesting bus segregation in Montgomery previously, so Rosa’s case was not even the most dire of circumstances. Yet, her relationship with the Montgomery head of the NAACP meant that he was the one who bailed her out of jail and led the search for a lawyer to represent her case. Their relationships with the press meant that the case garnered much more attention, especially when it began to infuriate the middle to upper class white supremacist group, White Citizens’ Council.
Read more here: https://blackgirlscreate.org/2021/02/the-plot-thickens-the-rebellious-life-of-mrs-rosa-parks/
Read more here: https://blackgirlscreate.org/2021/02/the-plot-thickens-the-rebellious-life-of-mrs-rosa-parks/
jacquelynjoan's review against another edition
5.0
Wow. A pleasure and an education to read. I feel so much more informed now.
I love the many quotes which make me feel a bit as if I were there. I love knowing from Mrs. Parks herself what she thought about events and people. I feel very affectionate and inspired by this radical, courageous, and dedicated woman.
I love the many quotes which make me feel a bit as if I were there. I love knowing from Mrs. Parks herself what she thought about events and people. I feel very affectionate and inspired by this radical, courageous, and dedicated woman.
alisonrose711's review against another edition
4.0
Really good account of Rosa Parks' life, before, during and after the bus boycott. It gives a much more thorough and realistic telling of her life and activism, and doesn't give the usual mythology about her just being a tired lady with sore feet and all that claptrap. You learn about the wide array of other tasks and struggles she took on, which went way beyond the bus tale, and really see her as a full and impressive, strong human being. I think the book could have benefited from a bit tighter editing, in that there was a bit of repetition and maybe a little too much detail on certain tangents and not enough on others, but overall I certainly recommend it.
Also - Rosa Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. The Senate voted unanimously for it, and all but one member of the House voted for it. That one member was Ron Paul. What an a-hole.
Also - Rosa Parks was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999. The Senate voted unanimously for it, and all but one member of the House voted for it. That one member was Ron Paul. What an a-hole.
pturnbull's review against another edition
5.0
A brilliant biography of Rosa Parks that describes the social and familial forces that combined to make her courageously fight to desegregate the south. After the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she faced new enemies: ageism, classism, and sexism, as she searched for employment in Detroit. Read it once, read it twice. You'll gain tremendous insight into Jim Crow, the freedom movement, and life in the so-called Northern promised land.
sethdmichaels's review against another edition
4.0
Really good in depth bio of Rosa Parks, from her decade of community organizing before the Montgomery bus boycott through her decades as an activist and Congressional staffer in Detroit after the boycott. She's more thoughtful, more radical, struggled through more than the reductive popular version of her story lets on. Highly recommended - the only thing keeping it from being five-star is that it's a little dryly academic, but Parks' life and the power of her political commitment are enough to keep it compelling.
akemi's review against another edition
4.0
This straightforward accounting of Rosa Parks was interesting to read since it helped flesh out her life both before and after her infamous bus ride. She has indeed been held up as a national symbol, one that most people don’t know beyond refusing to give up her seat. I enjoyed learning about all of the other work that she did in her lifetime. It made me appreciate her even more, but it also made me sad to read about how much she suffered as a result of her fighting for what is right. As an introvert myself, I liked how she practiced strength without expecting notoriety or acclaim. She showed up for people and was brave when others were not.