The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
by Jeanne Theoharis

This fable - of an accidental midwife without a larger politics - has made Parks a household name but trapped her in the elementary school curriculum, rendering her uninteresting to many young people.  The variety of struggles that Parks took part in, the ongoing nature of the campaign against racial injustice, the connections between Norther and Southern racism that she recognized, and the variety of Northern and Southern movements in which she engaged have been given short shrift in her iconization.  Park's act was separated from a community of people who prepared the way for her action, expanded her stand into a moment and continued with her in the struggle for justice in the decades ht followed.

This is an excellent piece of scholarship and an important contribution to our understanding of history.  Theoharis has done a monumental amount of research and synthesized it carefully in the service of her central thesis:  that Rosa Parks was a committed political activist, radical in her thought and consistent in her activism; that the myth of the tired seamstress who just wanted to sit down is designed to re-imagine her in a way that is safe for America to embrace; that that re-imagining of Parks is part of a larger project designed to defang the civil rights movement - to make it seem safe by making it appear peaceful, inevitable, and - most importantly - over.

Theoharis makes clear that Parks had been  involved in radical politics since her teen years.  She was a longstanding member of the NAACP and her husband was closely associated with the Communist Party, though never himself a member.  She gives a detailed accounting of previous protests and movements Parks had been involved in - especially around the Scottsboro Boys case, during which the CPUSA was a driving force of resistance.  She also makes clear that the NAACP decision to focus attention on Parks' arrest grew out of a years long search for an appropriate, politically viable case - a search that Parks herself had been involved in.  Her portrait of Claudette Colvin, a Montgomery teenager who got arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus a few months before Parks' arrest is at least as compelling as the Parks story itself.

Theoharis gives a very serviceable account of the bus boycott that grows in response to Parks' arrest, though she makes clear that Parks was only peripherally involved in its leadership.  She goes on to account for Parks' continued activism in their final months in Montgomery and her many years living in Detroit.  In the end, her thesis appears not just valid, but unassailable.

In fact, if the book has a flaw it is that it is too thesis driven.  While Theoharis complains that there has been no scholarly full biography of Parks, she herself has essentially used the Parks story to make her point about the nature of the civil rights movement.  We come away with a clear understanding that Parks was not some naively gentle old lady with sore feet, but we don't get a clear picture of who she was.  Theoharis does recount other episodes of defiance Parks engaged in - refusing previous orders from bus drivers to enter through the back door or drinking from white water fountains.  She quotes Parks discussing her refusal to take part in her own humiliation.

That is a striking phrase - both in that it characterizes Jim Crow so effectively as a system requiring African Americans to participate in their own humiliation and that it offers the clearest window into the character of Rosa Parks.   I ended the book wondering what it would be like to live a life under those circumstances and refuse to take part in your own humiliation.   Unfortunately, it is not a central focus of the book.  Ultimately, Theoharis is more interested in expressing her own ideas about history than in capturing Parks' character.