The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks | National Humanities Center

Humanities in Class: Webinar Series

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

American Civil Rights Movement; Activism; American History; African American History

Jeanne Theoharis (Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College)

February 1, 2022

Rosa Parks is a familiar figure in textbooks. Yet much of what people learn about Mrs. Parks is narrow, distorted, or just plain wrong. She’s trapped in a single moment on a long-ago Montgomery bus, too often cast as meek, tired, quiet and middle class. The boycott is seen as a natural outgrowth of her bus stand. But that’s not who she was, and it’s not how change actually works. She had a "life history of being rebellious"–beginning two decades before her bus stand and continuing for forty years after in Detroit. This webinar will provide an overview of Parks' life of freedom fighting and what it shows about our history and our present.


Subjects

History / American Civil Rights Movement / Activism / American History / African American History /

Rights

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0