The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

by Jeanne Theoharis

  23. Conyers, author interview.

  24. Vaughn, author phone interview.

  25. Watson, Atchison, and Horwitz, author interview.

  26. Chokwe Lumumba, author phone interview.

  27. Parks, Quiet Strength, 51.

  28. Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks: My Story (New York: Dial Books, 1992), 174–75.

  29. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 14.

  30. Parks, CRDP, 19.

  31. See Timothy B. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).

  32. As quoted in Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 193.

  33. Ibid., 183.

  34. Septima Clark, interview by Jacquelyn Hall, January 25, 1976, interview G-0016, SOHP.

  35. Church program, Folder 2–1, RPP.

  36. Douglas Brinkley, phone conversation with author, October 2010.

  37. Ibid.

  38. George Breitman, Malcolm X Speaks (New York: Grove Press, 1965).

  39. Ibid., 30.

  40. Vaughn, author phone interview; Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 202. The Freedom Now! newspaper lists Mary Hays Carter as associate editor.

  41. Boyd, author interview.

  42. Smith, Dancing in the Street, 142.

  43. Betty DeRamus, “Sparse Audience Hears Malcolm Ask for Action,” Michigan Chronicle, February 20, 1965.

  44. Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Ballantine, 1999), 367.

  45. Vaughn, author phone interview.

  46. DeRamus, “Sparse Audience Hears Malcolm.”

  47. Breitman, Malcolm X Speaks, 175.

  48. May 27, 1960, workshop with Parks, Highlander UC 515A, tape 202, part 1, HP.

  49. See program announcement, File 2–8, RPP; Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 191–93.

  50. Peter Bailey, author phone interview, April 12, 2012.

  51. Breitman, Malcolm X Speaks, 34.

  52. Parks, CRDP, 20.

  53. Interview with Parks, Rosa Parks File, Box 2, File 7, GMP.

  54. Parks, CRDP, 19.

  55. Watkins, “Mrs. Parks Recalls.”

  56. Documents listed in the Rosa Parks Archive (RPA) suggest that Parks met or spoke with Williams while she was living in Montgomery. Her papers contain a typed 1957 interview of Nixon on NAACP stationary “probably with Robert Williams” (Document II-B-3) and a one-page interview with Parks “probably with Robert Williams, the civil rights pioneer” (Document II-B-4).

  57. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 182–83.

  58. Grace Lee Boggs, “Rosa Parks Biography,” Yahoo Internet group post, True Blackness, June 26, 2000.

  59. Mabel Williams, author phone interview, July 26, 2010.

  60. “Robert Williams Memorial Service[,] Central Methodist, Monroe, NC[,] October 22, 1996,” Box 14, RWP; Mabel Williams, author phone interview, July 26, 2010.

  61. Conyers to NAACP, Reel 4, RWP.

  62. Mabel Williams, author phone interview.

  63. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 307. She also spoke at a previously planned tribute for Williams at Wayne State University on November 1.

  64. Martin Luther King Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, mlk-kpp01.standford.edu.

  65. “Rosa Parks: Spark of 1955 Still Warm,” Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1971.

  66. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 205.

  68. Clay Risen, A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2009), 92.

  68. Watkins, “Mrs. Parks Recalls,” Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1968.

  69. Hampton, Voices of Freedom, 470.

  70. “Ralph Abernathy Talks about ‘Poor People’ March,” Jet, May 9, 1968.

  71. Lilian Wiggins, “‘Woman Power’ Major Factor in Solidarity Day Activities,” Afro-American (Baltimore), June 22, 1968.

  72. Judith Martin, “Rosa Parks Lives in Detroit and Doesn’t Mind the Back Seat Now,” Washington Post, June 3, 1968.

  73. Roland L. Freeman, The Mule Train: A Journey of Hope Remembered (Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1998), 109.

  74. Martin, “Rosa Parks Lives in Detroit.”

  75. Ericka Huggins, author phone interview, July 6, 2009.

  76. John Bracey, author phone interview, January 12, 2011.

  77. Watson, Atchison, and Horwitz, author interview.

  78. Flight plans written on May 6, 1969, telegram, Folder 1–7, RPP.

  79. Handwritten notes for Chisholm introduction, Folder 2–8, RPP.

  80. Fred Durhal, author phone interview, May 21, 2012.

  81. Watson, Atchison, and Horwitz, author interview; Durhal, author phone interview.

  82. Conyers, author interview.

  83. See various mailings, Folder 4-12, RPP.

  84. Douglas Brinkley, Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War (New York: William Morrow, 2004), 347; Frank Joyce, author phone interview.

  85. “Women Plan Peace March,” Cleveland Call and Post, January 13, 1968; Cora Weiss, “Remembering Dagmar Wilson,” Nation, January 28, 2011.

  86. “Mrs. Parks Corrects Bus Boycott Story,” Washington Post, June 3, 1968.

  87. Martin, “Rosa Parks Lives in Detroit.”

  88. Roland L. Freeman, A Communion of Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories (Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1996), 68.

  89. Rosa Parks, interview, in African American Quiltmaking in Michigan, Marsha L. Macdowell, ed. (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1997), 134.

  90. Ibid., 135.

  91. Ibid., 158.

  92. “Rosa Parks—through the Eyes of Friends,” unmarked clipping, Rosa Parks file, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.

  93. Brinkley backhandedly acknowledges the importance of Black Power to Parks’s political outlook, making the apocryphal claim that “the slogan ‘Black Power’ never snarled from Rosa Parks’s lips but she believed in it wholeheartedly.” Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 191.

  94. Vonzie Whitlow, author interview, March 22, 2012.

  95. Barbara Alexander, author phone interview, May 23, 2012.

  96. “Black Militants ‘Won’t Back Any Presidential Candidate,’” Pittsburgh Courier, August 31, 1968; John Conyers, “Politics and the Black Revolution,” Ebony, August 1969.

  97. Nathan Hare, author phone interview, February 17, 2012.

  98. Muhammad Ahmad, author phone interview, January 7, 2011.

  99. Gwen Patton, author phone interview, April 19, 2012; Amiri Baraka, e-mail to Komozi Woodard, April 21, 2012.

  100. Henderson’s full description of the photo can be found at “Leroy Henderson/Photographer with Intro,” YouTube.com, October 5, 2006.

  101. Vaughn, author phone interview.

  102. Rhea McCauley, author phone interview, May 14, 2012. Rosa’s mother was not happy with this arrangement, and it lasted only a year.

  103. Carolyn Green, author phone interview.

  104. Dan Aldridge, author phone interview, October 24, 2010.

  105. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 202; Smethurst, Black Arts Movement, 202.

  106. “Informants May Have Seen All,” Michigan Chronicle, April 19, 1969.

  107. Petition, Box 5: Folder 2, George Crockett Papers, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit.

  108. April 13, 1975 Alabama Club Tea program, Folder 1-17, RPP.

  109. Heather Thompson, Whose Detroit? (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 82–91.

  110. Douglas Martin, “Imari Obadele, Who Fought for Reparations, Dies at 79,” New York Times, February 5, 2010.

  111. Chokwe Lumumba, author phone interview, September 9, 2010.

  112. John Conyers Jr., statement on the death of Imari Obadele (aka Richard Henry), downloaded from http://theobadeleproject.giving.officelive.com/Inlovingmemory.aspx.

  113. JoAnn Watson’s comments, Rosa Parks commemoration at Greater Grace Church, Detroit, October 24, 2010.

  114. Wilming
ton 10 Defense Committee material, Part II, Box 4, File 20, George Crockett Papers, Walter Reuther Library.

  115. “Free Angela Davis” materials, Folder 2-10, RPP.

  116. John Oppedahl, “12,000 Hail Angela Davis,” Detroit Free Press, June 19, 1972.

  117. Joanne Little Defense Committee materials, Folder 3-3, RPP.

  118. “Gary Tyler Protest Held,” Pittsburgh Courier, June 19, 1976.

  119. Barbara Winslow, author interview.

  120. Chokwe Lumumba, author phone interview, September 9, 2010.

  121. “Michigan Black Expo Overwhelming Success,” Wichita Times, July 13, 1972.

  122. “Koen Tells Detroit about Cairo,” Crusader (Rockford, IL), April 14, 1971.

  123. Rosa Parks, Myles Horton, and E. D. Nixon, radio interview by Studs Terkel, June 8, 1973, transcript, Box 14, Folder 4, MHP.

  124. Bob Greene, “Impact of a Single Act: How She Quietly Changed a Nation” (undated article), Folder 1–7, RPP.

  125. Floyd Norris, “Conspiracy Seen by King’s Family,” Afro-American (Baltimore), December 13, 1975.

  126. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 209.

  127. Ericka Huggins and Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, “Revolutionary Women, Revolutionary Education,” in Want To Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle, Dayo Gore, Jeanne Theoharis, and Komiz Woodard, eds. (New York: New York University Press, 2009).

  128. Ericka Huggins, author phone interview, July 6, 2009.

  129. Ibid.

  130. Parks, My Story, 210.

  131. Ibid., 201.

  132. Durr to Horton, October 12, 1979, Folder 4, Box 14, MHP.

  133. Francine McMillian, “Rosa Parks Says Fight Continues for King’s Dream,” Philadelphia Tribune, September 9, 1963.

  134. Karlyn Barker, “Rosa Parks, New Groups, Join Protest,” Washington Post, December 11, 1984. Though others got arrested, Parks did not.

  135. Roxanne Brown, “Mother of the Movement: Nation Honors Rosa Parks with Birthday Observance,” Ebony, February 1988.

  136. “Rosa Parks—through the Eyes of Friends,” Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.

  137. Karlyn Barker, “Apartheid Protests,” Washington Post, April 3, 1985.

  138. “Rosa Parks Leads March to Save PGH,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 22, 1976.

  139. Rael Jean Isaac, “Among the Intellectualoids: The War Crimes Racket,” American Spectator, January 1985.

  140. Edward Sargent, “Jackson Backers Attend Fundraiser at Howard,” Washington Post, April 2, 1984.

  141. “Rosa Parks Joins Jackson on Stage,” Los Angeles Sentinel, July 28, 1988.

  142. Kendall Wilson, “Honoring a Mother of the Movement,” Philadelphia Tribune, January 18, 1985.

  143. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Knopf, 2008), 288–89.

  144. Parks, Quiet Strength, 33.

  145. Herb Boyd, “Rosa Parks Remembers: Forty Years Later,” Crisis 103, no. 1 (January 1996).

  146. Yolanda Woodlee, “I Was Just One of Many,” Detroit News, January 31, 1988.

  147. Boyd, “Rosa Parks Remembers.”

  148. “America Salutes Rosa Parks,” video, SC.

  149. Ibid.

  150. Judge Damon Keith, author interview, June 14, 2007.

  151. Brinkley, Rosa Parks, 230–31.

  152. Melissa Michelson, “The Black Reparations Movement: Public Opinion and Congressional Policy Making,” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 5 (May 2002): 576.

  153. Parks, Dear Mrs. Parks, 38–39.

  CONCLUSION: “RACISM IS STILL ALIVE”

  1. Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed, Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), 36.

  2. Skipper received an eight-to-fifteen-year sentence and was transferred to an out-of-state prison for his own safety.

  3. Herbert continued, “It is time to grab the felons and the freaks and let them know . . . they will not be allowed to capture the soul of black America. That is the primary challenge of the next phase of the civil rights movement.” Bob Herbert, “Mrs. Parks’s Request,” New York Times, September 4, 1994.

  4. Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed, Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue with Today’s Youth (New York: Lee & Low Books, 1997), 36. According to Fred Durhal, Parks did not want to see the young man prosecuted, but because it was a felony, that decision was taken out of her hands (Durhal, author interview, May 21, 2012).

  5. James Bennet, “Sadness and Anger after a Legend Is Mugged,” New York Times, September 1, 1994.

  6. Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed, Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope, and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994), 37.

  7. Parks, Dear Mrs. Parks, 36.

  8. Carolyn Green, author phone interview, May 29, 2012.

  9. Desiree Cooper, “Husband Gave Fire to Reluctant Leader,” Detroit Free Press, October 26, 2005.

  10. Parks, Dear Mrs. Parks, 52–55.

  11. Roxanne Brown, “Mother of the Movement: Nation Honors Rosa Parks with Birthday Observance,” Ebony, February 1988.

  12. Richard Carter, “Memories of Rosa Parks—and the Unforgettable Day We Talked,” New York Amsterdam News, November 10, 2005.

  13. Rosa Parks, interview, June 19, 1981, You Got to Move research files, Folder 1, Box 11, LMP.

  14. Rosa Parks, interview by Newsforum (video), 1990, SC.

  15. “Diverse Coalition of Americans Speak Out Against War as Solution to Terrorism,” press release, September 19, 2001, printed in Yes! Magazine.

  16. Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks: My Story (New York: Dial Books, 1992), 207.

  17. Black comedian Nipsey Russell, the fourth celebrity panelist, knew Parks and purposely asked a question highlighting the contributions of artists such as Harry Belafonte. He disqualified himself during the voting.

  18. Earl Selby and Miriam Selby, Odyssey: Journey through Black America (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), 55.

  19. Bob Greene “Impact of a Single Act: How She Quietly Changed a Nation” (undated article, 1973), Folder 1–7, RPP.

  20. Rosa Parks, interview, BWOHP, 258–59.

  21. Accounts suggest that Nixon was not invited to the tenth-anniversary celebration—and it is unlikely that Parks was, since she did not go.

  22. Gregory Skwira, “The Rosa Parks Story: A Bus Ride, a Boycott, a New Beginning,” in Blacks in Detroit: A Reprint of Articles from the Detroit Free Press, Scott McGehee and Susan Watson, eds. (Detroit: Detroit Free Press, 1980), 19.

  23. Al Martinez, “L.A. Will Honor Rosa Parks: ‘Mother of Civil Rights’ a Reluctant Celebrity,” Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1980.

  24. Hans Massaquoi, “Rosa Parks: Still a Rebel with a Cause at 83,” Ebony, March 1996.

  25. Rosa Parks, interview, June 19, 1981, You Got to Move research files, Folder 1, Box 11, LMP.

  26. “Activist Is Honored for Doing the Right Thing,” USA Today, February 1, 1988.

  27. Emily Rovetch, ed., Like It Is: Arthur E. Thomas Interviews Leaders on Black America (New York: E. P Dutton, 1981), 51.

  28. Brown, “Mother of the Movement.”

  29. Ibid.

  30. Rosa Parks, interview by Newsforum, SC.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Lola Jones, “Another Ann Arbor—Rosa Parks,” December 12, 1993, collection of video cassettes, Bentley Historical Library, Ann Arbor, MI.

  33. Ibid.

  34. E. R. Shipp, “Rosa Parks, 92, Founding Symbol of Civil Rights Movement Dies,” New York Times, October 25, 2005.

  35. Georgette Norman, author interview, July 19, 2010.

  36. Materials, Folder 1-7, RPP.

  37. Shipp, “Rosa Parks, 92.”

  38. “‘I’d Do It Again,’ Says Rights Action Initiator,” Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1965.

  39. Greene, “Impact of a Single Act”, Folder 1–7, RPP.

&nbs
p; 40. Jim Cleaver, “An Overdue Tribute to a Gallant Lady,” Los Angeles Sentinel, August 17, 1978.

  41. “Sculpture of Civil Rights Heroine Rosa Parks Unveiled,” Jet, March 18, 1991.

  42. “Rosa Parks Awarded Congressional Gold Medal,” Jet, July 5, 1999.

  43. Lonnae O’Neal Parker, “Token of Gratitude,” Washington Post, June 16, 1999.

  44. Bill Clinton, “The Power of Ordinary People,” reprinted in Jet, July 5, 1999.

  45. Douglas Brinkley, Rosa Parks: A Life (New York: Penguin, 2000), 226.

  46. “Rosa Parks Inspires Without Speaking at Museum Dedication, 45 Years Later,” Los Angeles Sentinel, December 7, 2000.

  47. Mike Marquesee, Redemption Song (New York: Verso, 1999), 1, 5.

  48. Esther Cooper Jackson, author interview, December 15, 2009.

  49. Kim Severson, “New Museums to Shine a Spotlight on the Civil Rights Era,” New York Times, February 19, 2012.

  50. Glenn Eskew, “The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the New Ideology of Tolerance,” in The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, Renee C. Romano and Leigh Raiford, eds. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 28.

  51. Ibid., 29.

  52. Oralandar Brand-Williams, “Rosa Parks Dies,” Detroit News, October 24, 2005.

  53. Norman, author interview.

  54. Martha Norman Noonan, author phone interview, December 21, 2010.

  55. Judge Damon Keith, author interview, June 14, 2007.

  56. Sam Wineburg and Chauncey Monte-Sano, “‘Famous Americans’: The Changing Pantheon of American Heroes,” Journal of American History 94 (Spring 2008): 1190.

  57. See David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper, 1988); Eric Foner, Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003).

  58. Blight elaborates, “As is always the case in any society trying to master the most conflicted elements of its past, healing and justice had to happen in history and through politics.” Blight, Race and Reunion, 3–4.

  59. Renee Romano terms this “a national narrative of redemption and atonement, proof of the immense changes that have taken place in the racial politics in the United States since the 1960s.” Romano, The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, 99–100. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall has elaborated the political interests behind it.“Germinated in well-funded right-wing think tanks and broadcast to the general public, this racial narrative had wide appeal, in part because it conformed to white, middle-class interests and flattered national vanities and in part because it resonated with ideals of individual effort and merit that are widely shared.” Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (March 2005).