Rosa Parks (Penguin Lives) - Hardcover

Brinkley, Douglas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670891606 ISBN 13: 9780670891603

Publisher: Viking Pr, 2000

Synopsis

A portrait of the African American woman immortalized for refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger examines who Rosa Parks was before, during, and after her historic act

About this title

About the Author

Douglas Brinkley is Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans. He is the author of several award-winning books. A regular commentator on National Public Radio, his articles have appeared in publications that include The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly.

Reviews

In the second volume to date of the popular Penguin Lives series to be devoted to a woman (remarkably, only four of the projected 26 subjects will be female), historian Brinkley shreds several key myths surrounding Rosa Parks, the African-American woman who became "the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement" at the age of 42, when she boldly defied Jim Crow laws by refusing to give up her seat to a white rider on a segregated bus in 1955. The act catalyzed the historic 381-day Montgomery bus boycott and stirred the nation's conscience. Yet Parks has a more complex personality than is suggested by her shy, soft-spoken public persona, Brinkley reveals. Despite a humble, fatherless childhood in rural Alabama, she quickly distinguished herself as a tireless worker with the local NAACP, devoting her energies to area youth groups, recording the problems of victims of hate crimes and participating in the organization's major state conferences. Brinkley (The Unfinished Presidency, etc.) pinpoints the origins of Parks's strength and strong social commitment as he details the legalized segregation that tainted every aspect of Southern life. His short, compelling scenes rivet the reader, although some merely expand on previously disclosed events, such as the wave of jealousy and backbiting among Parks's peers, her resurgence in Detroit politics as an aide to Representative John Conyers and the savage beating and robbery that almost took her life in 1994. Like several books in this series, Brinkley's tribute to Parks succeeds not because of an abundance of fresh revelations but because of its wealth of insight and rich portraiture. Agent, Andrew Wylie; 4-city author tour. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A graceful, informative biography of the mother of the Civil Rights movement, who wouldn't stand for Jim Crow on her bus.Brinkley (The Unfinished Presidency, 1998, etc.) examines the background of the soft-spoken, prayerful woman who seemed unlikely to become a historic icon. Before King there was Rosa Parks, wrote Nelson Mandela, and Brinkley demonstrates that before Rosa Parks there was a poor, fatherless seamstress from Tuskegee named Rosa McCauley. Her hometown gave her Booker T. Washington's proud self-reliance, while the African Methodist Episcopal Church fueled her courageous expectations for justice and righteousness. Her grandfather moved the family to Montgomery, carrying a shotgun to ward off the threats of Ku Klux Klan violence. Brinkley reports on a litany of lynchings, murders, and other segregation-related arrests that Parks witnessed before and after she married a barber named Raymond Parks. While Raymond was perhaps best known for his reluctance to have his wife turned into a civil-rights symbol (and consequently a target for racists), the author credits him with radicalizing her through his espousal of NAACP politics and attendance at passive-resistance seminars. Brinkley nonetheless makes a good case that Parks did not plan her epochal rebellion during that bus-ride of December 1, 1955, in advance. It seemed as if Rosa Parks were two people: one, a traditionally submissive Negro laborer; the other, a modern African-American woman bold enough to demand her civil rights. Each moment of Parks's defiance (her refusal to yield, her subsequent arrest, etc.) is described in detail. Brinkley then depicts the astonishing phenomenon by which a one-day bus boycott turned into a pivotal protest of six months, and he presents the input of Reverend King and others. He also summarizes Parks's historic impact and provides 11 pages of bibliography for those who wish to study the controversy in greater detail.No collection of African-American history should miss this bus. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Parks called the evening she didn't give up her seat "a stopping place . . . for me to stop being pushed around and to find out what human rights I had, if any." Parks' moment of resistance has become iconic, but her lifetime of civil rights work is less familiar. University of New Orleans historian Brinkley tells the story of that work in this latest Penguin Lives entry. Brinkley earns awards and acclaim because he understands that writing history is telling a story. Rosa Parks' story takes readers from rural Alabama to the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, marriage to barber Raymond Parks, quiet activism in the '30s and '40s, a first experience of integration at the Highlander Folk School, arrest in 1955 and the bus boycott, a move to Detroit, and more than 20 years on the staff of Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). In his bibliographical notes, Brinkley calls Parks "America's real-life Miss Jane Pittman, not a saint, but a symbol of the triumph of steadfastness in the name of justice." Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Effectively evoking time and place from Rosa Louise McCaulery's birth in Tuskegee, AL, on February 4, 1913, to her receiving the U.S. Congress's highest honor-the Congressional Gold Medal-in 1999, historian Brinkley (Univ. of New Orleans) profiles the quiet woman dubbed "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement." On December 1, 1955, the seamstress, who married Raymond Parks and served as secretary to the NAACP chapter in Alabama's capital, refused to give up her city bus seat to a white man and was arrested for violating racial segregation laws. Brinkley's contribution to the "Penguins Lives" series captures the resolve that helped launch and guide the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1995-56 and the crusading protest that followed. An easy-to-read synthesis, this book offers general readers an accessible profile of both Parks and black protest against white supremacy for most of the 20th century. The recently re-issued 1992 autobiography, Rosa Parks: My Story (Penguin Putnam Bks. for Young Readers, 1999) provides a more personal focus on Parks. Recommended for collections on biography, African Americans, women's studies, Civil Rights, the South, or modern U.S. history.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Pr
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670891606
• ISBN 13: 9780670891603
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 246