Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best Books of 2021
Now adapted for readers ages 12 and up, the award-winning biography
that examines Parks's life and 60 years of radical activism and brings
the civil rights movement in the North and South to life
Rosa Parks is one of the most well-known Americans today, but much of
what is known and taught about her is incomplete, distorted, and just
plain wrong. Adapted for young people from the NAACP Image Award-winning
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy
Colbert shatter the myths that Parks was meek, accidental, tired, or
middle class. They reveal a lifelong freedom fighter whose activism
began two decades before her historic stand that sparked the Montgomery
bus boycott and continued for 40 years after. Readers will understand
what it was like to be Parks, from standing up to white supremacist
bullies as a young person to meeting her husband, Raymond, who showed
her the possibility of collective activism, to her years of frustrated
struggle before the boycott, to the decade of suffering that followed
for her family after her bus arrest. The book follows Parks to Detroit,
after her family was forced to leave Montgomery, Alabama, where she
spent the second half of her life and reveals her activism alongside a
growing Black Power movement and beyond.
Because Rosa Parks was active for 60 years, in the North as well as the
South, her story provides a broader and more accurate view of the Black
freedom struggle across the twentieth century. Theoharis and Colbert
show young people how the national fable of Parks and the civil rights
movement--celebrated in schools during Black History Month--has warped
what we know about Parks and stripped away the power and substance of
the movement. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks illustrates how
the movement radically sought to expose and eradicate racism in jobs,
housing, schools, and public services, as well as police brutality and
the over-incarceration of Black people--and how Rosa Parks was a key
player throughout.
Rosa Parks placed her greatest hope in young people--in their vision,
resolve, and boldness to take the struggle forward. As a young adult,
she discovered Black history, and it sustained her across her life. The
Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks will help do that for a new
generation.
