The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks - Softcover

Theoharis, Jeanne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807033324 ISBN 13: 9780807033326

Verlag: Beacon Press, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

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.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jeanne Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She received an A.B. in Afro-American studies from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in American culture from the University of Michigan. She is the author or coauthor of six books and numerous articles on the black freedom struggle and the contemporary politics of race in the United States


From the Hardcover edition.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

From the Introduction
 
National Honor/Public Mythology:
The Passing of Rosa Parks
 
On October 24, 2005, after nearly seventy years of activism, Rosa Parks died in her home in Detroit at the age of 92. Within days of her death, Rep. John Conyers Jr., who had employed Parks for twenty years in his Detroit office, introduced a resolution to have her body lie in honor. Less than two months after Hurricane Katrina and after years of partisan rancor over the social justice issues most pressing to civil rights activists like Parks, Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle rushed to pay tribute to the “mother of the civil rights movement.” Parks would become the first woman and 2nd African American to lie in honor in the nation’s Capitol. “Awesome” was how Willis Edwards, a longtime associate who helped organize the three-state tribute, described the numbers of the people who pulled it together.

Parks’ body was first flown to Montgomery for a public viewing and service attended by various dignitaries, including Condoleezza Rice who affirmed that "without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing here today as Secretary of State." Then her body was flown to Washington DC, on a plane commanded by Lou Freeman, one of the first African American chief pilots for a commercial airline. The plane circled Montgomery twice in honor of Parks, with Freeman singing “We Shall Overcome” over the loudspeaker.  “There wasn’t a dry eye in the plane,” recalled Parks’ longtime friend, Federal Sixth Circuit Judge, Damon Keith. Her coffin was met in Washington DC by the National Guard and accompanied to its place of honor at the Capitol Rotunda.

Forty thousand Americans came to the Capitol to bear witness to her passing. President and Mrs. Bush laid a wreath on her unadorned, cherry-wood coffin. “The Capitol Rotunda is one of America's most powerful illustrations of the values of freedom and equality upon which our republic was founded,” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), resolution co-sponsor, explained to reporters, “and allowing Mrs. Parks to lie in honor here is a testament to the impact of her life on both our nation's history and future.”  Yet, Frist claimed Parks’ stand was “not an  intentional attempt to change a nation, but a singular act aimed at restoring the dignity of the individual.” Her body was next taken to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church for a public memorial to an overflowing crowd.

Her casket was then shipped back to Detroit for another public viewing at the Museum of African American History.  Thousands waited in the rain to pay their respects to one of Detroit’s finest.  The 7-hour funeral celebration at Detroit’s Greater Grace Temple attracted 4000 mourners and a parade of speakers and singers from Bill Clinton to Aretha Franklin.  In their tributes, Democratic presidential hopefuls focused on Parks’ quietness:  Senator Barack Obama praised Parks as a “small quiet woman whose name will be remembered” while Senator Hilary Clinton spoke of the importance of “quiet Rosa Parks moments.” As thousands more waited outside to see the dramatic spectacle, a horse-drawn carriage carried Mrs. Parks' coffin to Woodlawn Cemetery where she was buried next to her husband and mother.[iv] Six weeks later, President Bush signed a bill ordering a permanent statue of Parks placed in the U.S. Capitol, the first ever of an African American, explaining, “By refusing to give in, Rosa Parks showed that one candle can light the darkness. …Like so many institutionalized evils, once the ugliness of these laws was held up to the light, they could not stand…and as a result, the cruelty and humiliation of the Jim Crow laws are now a thing of the past.”

Parks’ passing presented an opportunity to honor a civil rights legend and to foreground the pivotal but not fully recognized work of movement women. Many sought to commemorate her commitment to racial justice and pay tribute to her courage and public service. Tens of thousands of Americans took off work and journeyed long distances to Montgomery, DC, and Detroit to bear witness to her life and pay their respects. Across the nation, people erected alternate memorials to Mrs. Parks in homes, churches, auditoriums and public spaces of their communities. The streets of Detroit were packed with people who, denied a place in the church, still wanted to honor her legacy.[vi] Awed by the numbers of people touched by Parks’ passing, friends and colleagues saw this national honor as a way to lift up the legacy of this great race woman.

Despite those powerful visions and labors, the woman who emerged in the public tribute bore only a fuzzy resemblance to Rosa Louise Parks.  Described by the New York Times as the “accidental matriarch of the civil rights movement,” the Rosa Parks who surfaced in the deluge of public commentary was, in nearly every account, characterized as “quiet". “Humble,” “dignified” and “soft-spoken”, she was “not angry” and “never raised her voice.”  Her public contribution as the “mother of the movement” was repeatedly defined by one solitary act on the bus on a long-ago December day. 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. In this story, the civil rights movement demonstrated the power and resiliency of American democracy. Birthed from the act of a simple Montgomery seamstress, a nonviolent struggle built by ordinary people had corrected the aberration of Southern racism without overthrowing the government or engaging in a bloody revolution.

This narrative of national redemption entailed rewriting this history of the black freedom struggle along with Parks’ own rich political history —disregarding her and others’ work in Montgomery that had tilled the ground for decades for a mass movement to flower following her 1955 bus stand.  It ignored her forty years of political work in Detroit after the boycott, as well as the substance of her political philosophy, a philosophy with commonalties to Malcolm X, Queen Mother Moore, and Ella Baker, as well as Martin Luther King.  The 2005 memorial celebrated Parks the individual rather than a community coming together in struggle. Reduced to one act of conscience made obvious, the long history of activism that laid the groundwork for her decision, the immense risk of her bus stand, and her labors over the 382-day boycott went largely unheralded, the happy ending replayed over and over.   Her sacrifice and lifetime of political service were largely backgrounded.

Buses were crucial to the pageantry of the event and trailed her coffin around the country.  Sixty Parks family members and dignitaries traveled from Montgomery to DC aboard three Metro buses draped in black bunting. Once in DC, a vintage bus also dressed in black followed the hearse, along with other city buses, for a public memorial at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. The procession to and from the Capitol Rotunda included an empty vintage 1957 bus. The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan offered free admission the day of her funeral so visitors could see the actual bus “where it all began.”

Parks’ body also served as important...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Beacon Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0807033324
• ISBN 13: 9780807033326
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 360
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar