The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Park blows away the myths we learned about the “tired seamstress” who gave up her seat on the bus. The only thing she was tired of was injustice.

Parks had an amazing life of activism going back to the 1930s, beginning with her concern about the Scottsboro boys through the struggle in the South, and her work with Myles Horton at the Highlander Folk School, the bus boycott in Montgomery and then to Detroit where she lived more than half her life. She worked with the left, communists, socialists, the anti-war and black power movements, and had great admiration and respect for Malcolm X and Robert Williams.

Whatever we think we know about Rosa Parks, there is far more we do not know and will learn from this work. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks is a must for teachers, parents, and grandparents, to undo the damaging myths that essentially began and ended her political life on December 1, 1955, frozen in time as Dr. King was on August 28, 1963. Most Americans are unaware of their anti-war and anti-capitalist views.

Jeanne Theoharis’s book is a must, an outstanding work.

—-Review by John Marciano, Professor Emeritus at SUNY Cortland and co-author of Teaching the Vietnam War.

Credit: By Jeanne Theoharis. Published by Beacon Press, January 2014.