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A review by justabean_reads
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis
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.)