The Rebellious Life of Rosa Parks

This past Monday marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rosa Parks. She would become one of the most well know women of the twentieth century. When she died in 2005, her body was placed in the Capitol rotunda. Yet the narrative of her life is often defined as a reluctant champion of civil rights, whose one action, on a bus in Montgomery in 1955, made her an iconic figure.

In fact, her life was was really a lifelong fight for for the black freedom struggle. Historian Jeanne Theoharis in The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks paints a broad and nuanced picture of Rosa Parks as a sophisticated political actor and thinker.

My conversation with Jeanne Theoharis: var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-6296941-2"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}