history tv, jean theo harris talks about her book the rebellious life of mrs. rosa parks, in which cheaper counts the political activism of the late civil rights leader. the author argues that -- about her involvement in the civil rights movement was far more extensive. theoharis is a political science professor at brooklyn college at the city university of new york. the university of montgomery hosted this event in 2013. it's just under an hour. >> good evening. i am the director of the rosa parks museum. on behalf of the chancellor, faculty, student body, i welcome you to our campus. i will ask you a question. how were you politicized? how are you acculturated? i want you to think about that. as we honor rosa parks's 100th birthday, we have the honor of having with us to start this whole celebration off doctor jeanne theoharis, who asked that question of rosa parks. what was behind her? but was behind the no heard around the world? those simple two letters that opened the floodgates of all those divergent streams into that one vast ocean. at the time, that no carried with a great risk. risk in terms of gender, and race. the question is what is behind that? what makes one take those kinds of stance? what is the price paid for having done so? doctor theoharis asked some of those questions and she writes it in her new book the rebellious life of rosa parks. jeanne theoharis was born in staten island, spent about six weeks there and promptly moved till milwaukee, wisconsin, where she was raised. oh she held the first chair of women's studies and is a professor of political science at brooklyn college. she is also the cofounder of educators for civil liberties. she is the author of numerous books on the civil rights movement and the contemporary politics of race in the united states, including as coauthor of students talk back to a segregated nation. she received a b. a. an african american cities and a ph. d. in american culture from the university of michigan. she is the coauthor of six books and numerous articles on the black freedom struggle and the contemporary politics of race in the united states. her latest book, for which she will be reading, works as a corrective to the popular iconography of parks as a quiet seamstress with one single act. she was a civil rights radical who thought to expose and eradicate the american racial caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice. help me welcome doctor jeanne theoharis. [applause] [applause] [applause] >> i so delighted to be here. my book came out last weekend it would not have been possible without the help and support and division of many, many people, including many people here in montgomery who talked to me, who pointed me towards materials and archives. and many people in detroit did the same thing and we're committed to telling a bigger, broader story, not just of rosa parks, but have a life of being rebellious, as she would put it. i am tremendously grateful to be here tonight and also tremendously grateful to many people that i interviewed for the book. certainly, this book is far better for that. >> it's one of the most well-known american stories, even among elementary schoolers. on the evening of december 1st, 1955, rosa parks take the bus home after work. when the front of the bus filled and one white man was left standing, the bus driver asked her to move. parks refused. the bus driver had her arrested. her arrest galvanize the black community in a yearlong boycott of montgomery buses. this catapulted a young martin luther king jr. into national leadership and ushered in the modern civil rights movement. when year later, upon order from the supreme court, the buses in montgomery were desegregated. despite parks's center placement in the story and in the subsequent memorialization of the civil rights movement, and we rarely see this story and surrounding history from her perspective. hidden in plain sight, she is the symbol, but rarely the story. parks has been awarded the country's highest honors, the congressional gold medal, the presidential medal of freedom, the first woman and second african american ever to lie in honor in the nation's capital. next monday, february 4th, on the centennial of her birth, the post office will issue a stamp in her honor. but despite these honors, her legacy has too often been reduced to a simple act by a quiet seamstress on a single day. that fable of rosa parks is used to show how far we've come to put the history of the civil rights movement firmly in the past. her quietness is celebrated over and over and over again. it seems fitting to return to the founding moment and it's broader history and look at it a new. seeing events from her perspective deepens how we understand the civil rights movement and for substantial ways. first, it gives us a much longer history, more than a decade, of the political work that parks and the cauldron activists did to till the soil for a movement to emerge in montgomery. second, it shows the courageous, how courageous, parks's bus stand was, the key role as many people, including many women, played in the struggle, and the sacrifice and suffering it produced for parks and her family. third, it shows the breadth of the civil rights movement, as the parks family are forced to leave montgomery and she spends more than half of her political life in detroit, challenging the racism of the gym crow north. finally, i think it provides lessons for us today of what it takes to make change in a moment and over the course of a lifetime, and what her legacy asks of us know. so who was rosa parks before the boycott? parks had a history of being rebellious. she was raised by her mother and grandparents who taught her to stand up for herself. her grandfather was a follower of marcus garvey. there is no education provided for black children pass to the sixth grade, so her mother center to a school for white girls here in montgomery. rosa was a reserve girl, a bit of a goody two shoes, her friends thought, who followed the schools prohibitions against dancing, movies, makeup, and short hair. but she had a feisty side. when she and her brother were threatened by a white bully, she picked up a brick and threatened to hit him. he stopped. when a young boy pusher in front of his mother, she pushed back. when the mother threatened to kill her, she said he pushed me and i didn't want him pushing me. parks met and fell in love with raymond parks in 1931, the first real activist i ever met, she says. when they married, raymond parks was working to free the nine scotts borough boys, nine men aged 12 to 19 who have been caught riding the trains, riding the rails as many people did during the great depression. two white women have been found on the train and the charge quickly turned to rape and they were quickly charged and sentenced to death. raymond and a group of local people sort of became the groundwork for a kind of free and defend the scottsboro boys. rosa jewelry named in. recall the late night meeting at her house and later reflected that she was so scared she had forgot to offer a refreshment. in 1943, she saw a picture of johnny car, a classmate, in a photo of the local naacp. realizing the organization was open to women, she decided to attend her first meeting. the only woman there that day, the branch was having elections, and she was elected secretary. she wanted to register to vote. a sleeping car porters active in the union was heading up this effort. there were only 31 black people in montgomery at that time registered to vote. nixon came by her apartment to bring her some materials, and so began a partnership that would change the course of american history. she tried three times to vote. part of the process was a test, but the test was administered differently for black people land for white people. the third time she took, it sure that she had passed and that -- she copied down all the questions and the answers. the registrar saw her. she passed the test. a final hurdle was once you were registered, people were required to pay pull taxes, not just from the year that they got registered, but from all the years back to when they had been eligible to vote. a dollar 50 for each year, so for rosa parks, that was 18 dollars, which was an extraordinary amount of money. but they found it. e. d. next in and rosa parks wanted to transform the montgomery naacp into a more active, essentially 19 for, that nixon runs for president and winds. parks is elected secretary. many middle class members of the branch wanted more of a social club and posed these politics, and they wrote to the national naacp office. these letters are at the library of congress and they are mad and they don't like him and i think he's a dictator for his politicking. they tried to get the national office to come in. both parks and nixon were working class. they lived on the working class westside. she is living in the cleveland court project with her husband and then her mother lives in. nixon and parks are reelected to head the montgomery branch, and they also come to head the alabama conference of the naacp. a lot of what they did in this period, the late forties, was try to document wiper tally against black people, tried to file affidavits,, try to protests and challenge the prosecuting of black men for sexual crimes who had either stepped out of place or we're having consensual relationships with white women. so these charges were used to put people back in their place. rosa parks traveled the state taking testimony, trying to get people to sort of be willing to sign affidavits to send to the justice department that they would send to the national office and sent to the justice department. but this work was incredibly dangerous. most people were very scared and refused to sign affidavits, much to the dismay and frustration of raman parks. so i think when we hear the term today it sounds somewhat mild, but this work was anything but mild and only a few were courageous enough to do it. in the mid forties, rosa parks attends an nba double acp leadership training workshops organized by miss baker and she finds i love baker tremendously inspiring. she becomes a mentor for rosa parks and often will stay with rosa parks when she comes to alabama and when she comes to montgomery. over and over, this sort of small group of activists sort of try to demonstrate their opposition. but most of these cases go nowhere and she is increasingly discouraged. she reforms the youth chapter of the branch and takes great pleasure and working with the young people and in particular, trying to get the young people to take more forceful stance against segregation, including a sit-in at the main library because the main library wasn't open to black patrons. black people had to go to the colored branch to get books and so she and the young people start to do sort of returns when they try and go and try to write the main branch to serve them. on the suggestion of white civil rights supporter and leftist, virginia tour, who parks had been sewing for at night, rosa parks decides to attend a two-week workshop at highlander folk school on segregation. highlander was an adult training school in tennessee and by the 19 fifties had turned her attention to civil rights. it had always been an interracial space but by the fifties, and particularly in the wake of the brown decision and the supreme courts unwillingness to put any timetable on segregation. so in 1955, with that sort of classic language with all the speed, the supreme court backs off any implementation and so activists like miles, who ran highlander and rosa parks see that they're going to have to do this themselves. so for two weeks in august of 1955, our rosa parks goes to tennessee enjoins with 48 other people to develop a plan for the implementation of segregation. this is tremendously good for her spirit. it's the first time she feels that she could speak and eat and meet with white people without hostility. she liked waking up in the morning and having white people make her breakfast. subpoena clark, who ran many of the workshops and she's a teacher who had been fired because she refused to give up her membership at the and that naacp is another huge inspiration and mentor for rosa parks and parks really add fires how calm clark is when she feels so nervous and sort of worn down. on the last day, they do like many organizing training workshops. they do a go around and everybody supposed to say whether going to do when they go back. and rosa parks says, nothing's ever going to happen in montgomery. it's the cradle of the confederacy, white resistance is too enormous and the community isn't in unified and won't stick together. so i'm going to work with the young people. so the idea that rosa parks to just one day up and did what you did, this is the community, the courage, the fortitude and the frustration that they did groundwork for her actions. okay, so the bus. various misconceptions as i think most of you know. she was not sitting in the white section, she was not particularly tire that day. she was not a plant. her act to require tremendous courage, in part because she and many other people had need stance on the bus against segregation had gone nowhere. the bus driver carried a gun. her act was not the first or the third, indeed a number of people in the decade since world war ii had made stands on the bus, her neighbor, and cleared brooks in 1950 had been killed by police for his stand on the bus. 15-year-old clot of covid, who had been arrested in march had been manhandled by police. caressed had stunned montgomery's black community and parks that raised money for her case, but no mass movement had emerged. on that december evening, she got off work. deciding to wait for a less crowded bus, she goes to the drugstore to pick up a few things. about 5:30 she boards the bus, taking a seat in the middle section. at the third stop, the bus fills up and one white man is left standing. and by the term of segregation at that time, for people who are going to have to get up for that one white man to sit. the driver, tells the four black people in the middle row to move. three reluctantly, according to parks, get up. but pushed as far as she can be pushed, she decides to stand fast. making way for the man sitting next to her to get up and then sliding over to the window. people always say that that and give of my seat because i was tired, but that isn't true. i wasn't that tired physically or no more tired than i usually was at the end of a working day. no, the only tired i was was tired of giving in. but she did not believe that any movement necessarily would ensue from her act. there is no evidence of any plan or indication to the moment presented itself that rosa parks knew she could summon the courage to reviews to move from her seat. it is likely that she, like many black montgomery's, particularly after his arrest have talked about what they would do if she was asked to give a proceed to a white person. but thinking or even talking about it and actually being able to act in the moment are vastly different as most of us know. but what makes parks different is in that moment, she sees the opportunity and summons the will to stand fast. i'm sure that she would get off the bus alive, she described it in one of the worst days of her life. in interviews later, she admits to wishing either people had joined her and describes her stand in less than triumphal terms. at times, i thought resigned to give what i could to protest against the way i was being treated. but she also contextualized -- within a political organizer. an opportunity was being given to me to do what i had asked of others. seeing herself part of a movement, chief l2 had responsibility to act on behalf of the larger community. she had been pushing the young people and the youth council and had grown disappointed in the ways that adults in the community had filled our young people. her decision to hike in frustration with the lack of change, that i believe that her particular action would alter anything, quote, i simply did it because i thought nobody else would do anything. so back to the bus. blake gets off the bus to call supervisor who tells rosa -- haim to put her off the bus. that's with the supervisor says. people are grumbling on the bus, she can't hear them but they're grumbling. blake then calls the police and the police come and could have just evicted her from the vice and she believes that's what the police wanted to do. she overhears them saying something but blake insists that he wants for arrested and agrees to come down after to sign the paperwork. she also in a number of interviews, talks about finding horizon irritating and annoying. and i sort of love these works because at the time, she sees this as a detour from the work that she's doing. she's planning this big youth workshop that weekend, right? and now she's gone herself arrested and she doesn't see this at the moment where it's all going up and up. jesse,'s now have been arrested. she calls home, meanwhile, somebody on the bus goes to tell e. d. nixon and so nixon and that -- as well as her husband come down to bail her out a few hours later. they go back to parks is apartment and nixon isn't measured delighted because this is sort of a test he's been looking for. who's worked for her safety but also that the community won't stay together and back here in the long run as had happened earlier. but after some discussion, she decides to go forward, she called for -- as fred for a new young black lawyer that she has been mentoring, meeting with, so she calls him that night and crazy then colds joanne robinson, who is the head of the women's political council and the women's political council that decides that night to call for a one day boycott on the monday when parks is to be arraigned in court. in the middle of the night, robinson sneaks into alabama state, where she is a person fessler and runs off 35,000 leaflets. at 3 am, robinson calls nixon. robinson doesn't call parks in, interesting lee. but she calls nixon and at five in the morning, eating nixon starts making calls to ministers in town. because he wants and he sees the need for the ministers to be on board. so he calls auburn at the, and then he calls a young minister in town by the name of reverend martin luther king who is in the one town and whose churches very centrally located and nixon sees this as an ideal place to have this meeting. it is not until the next day at one lunch, however, that rosa parks finds out about these plans when she goes, like she usually does, she often would walk from her job at montgomery fair to have lunch at fred craze office and she gets there that day, it's there that she finds out about the plan. meanwhile, that saturday, she has scheduled this youth workshop and only a couple kids come and she is really disappointed and increasingly nervous. so she's playing this whole thing, up no becomes and now they're pointing this boycott for monday and she is worried. so the first day of the boycott is amazing. and she very much describes for best memory from that whole year being waking up that morning and seeing the buses empty. she goes to court and then after court goes back to fred gray's office to help halt. earthy is really evidence is her core political spirit. she doesn't go back to work that day she, doesn't go home, obviously's been kind of a big day. she goes back because there is all these people calling fred craze office and so she answers the phones. but, she doesn't tell people that it's her. so she sitting there answering the phone, telling people what they need to know but does not say, this is me, this is rosa parks. and then meanwhile, that afternoon, great goes to a meeting that is actually the meeting that will burst among covering approve meant association and so rosa parks is back in her office answering the phones while grain king and this is the beginning of the monger summary association, the kind of season it. and then that night, 15,000 people packed and the surrounding streets, thousands of people don't get in, virginia doesn't get in, rosa parks has to fight her way kind of into the church to get, and she is on the dies that day. and given a tremendous standing ovation but is not speak. i do recall asking someone if i should say something, she later recalled. and someone saying, you've said enough. in a later interview with miles, she noted that she just sat up there, i think everybody spoke quite a, and she said. and then broader me at that point. the boycott itself lasted 382 days, maintained by tremendous unity, fund-raising and twice weekly mass meetings and an amazingly elaborate carpool that was set up with 40 pick up stations around the city where they charge the regular bus fare and made it possible for people to go to work, to go to church, to go to doctors, to go shopping and other areas. people would use the view for victory sign to identify themselves. attempts to break the boycott and the carpool of legion, people were often pelted with food, stones, you're in another things, police continually pulled over carpools han real an imagine airy for -- white citizens council membership explodes, 14,000 members in the first three months of the boycott. the mayor and the police can finish her draw in and then in february, using an old law on the books, they indict 89 of the boycott leaders. but instead of weakening the organization, this further strengthens the result of. rosa parks spends much of that year fund-raising. crisscrossing the country, raising money and attention for the monterrey approved in association in the naacp. even though her own family is in serious financial trouble. she loses her job about a month into the boycott. she's working as an insistent here in montgomery fair and her husband is a barbara at the maxwell air force base and they say, they forbid any top of the boycott for that women and for a proud political man like raman parks, that is an untenable situation. and so he also loses his job. so they are in serious economic trouble, so she is spends a lot of that year, just all across the country, raising money to make this the youngest kind of amazing organization possible. and also turning this local movement, in many ways, to our national struggle. so what happens? afterwards even on the boycott hands, she and raymond still find it impossible to find any sort of study work. they are still receiving constant death threats. her and nixon want to start an independent forward or registration initiative for all of alabama and the ideas that she would read it full vibe, boosted fred grace office. and they tried to start fund-raising for this. meanwhile, this sort of dissension and controversy kind of erupts behind closed doors and then montgomery improvement association about a paved political source position for rosa parks. but nixon and parks or kind of on the outside and so she is not offered work. eight months later, unable to find a job, dispirited, sort of by the situation and facing death threats, they decide to leave moved to detroit where her brother is and she described detroit as the promised land that wasn't. she still struggled, they still struggle to find work. they lived as she describes it, and the heart of the ghetto. her health problems continue. she had developed ulcers during the boycott that continue to play her and land her in the hospital 1960 but they can't afford the bill so they go into collection. this suffering starts to get exposed in the black press in, particular this cover story by jet magazine in 1960 on quote, the best boycotts forgotten woman. and that begins to sound the alarm and kind of raise attention to sort of, her situation and does lead to some help. even in the midst of these difficulties, she spends the second half of her life in detroit, challenging the racial discrimination of the jim crow, now worth. housing, schools, jobs, police brutality. her description of detroit as the northern promised land that wasn't is the probable reminder that racial inequality was a national played, not a southern animality. while the public signs of segregation were thankfully gone, rosa parks did not find too much difference, that's for quote, between race relations and montgomery or like 40 votes. and very much a tribute to part of what he winds turn rosa parks kind of prevailing king to come. and so one of the first things that congress does is he hires rosa parks to work in his detroit office. handling constituent needs and doing community outreach. particularly around issues like jobs, housing, welfare and again, this is particularly in the first years, she's really kind of part of his community presence on the ground. obviously by the later years, she worked until 1988, certainly by the eighties her bill it's becoming more ceremonial. but in those first years, she is a key presence and a key legitimizing force for congress. and congress gets a lot of flak for hiring rosa parks. the office receives all sorts of hate calls and death threats and she receives all sorts of lotions. nonetheless, she is sort of undeterred. and in the 1960s and 70s sort of continuous or work amidst the kind of growing power movement. rosa parks personal hero, in fact, was malcolm x. and she got to meet and hear him three times. the first time was in 1963, when he comes to detroit, gives his famous a message to the grassroots and he had actually wanted to meet her and he kind of makes it known to mutual friends that so that's the first time they meet. the last time they meet is actually the speech he gives that's often refer her to as the last message. it's the week before he's assassinated. it's actually a program being given by -- and she is being honored at our program and so they get to meet and have a longer personal discussion that day. so, by the 19 sixties and seventies, her political commitments and again, these include -- she is a long-standing, lifelong believer in self-defense. she has long believed that there needed to be more black history in the curriculum, she's long been critical of the criminal justice system, she's long fought for independent black political cow power and economic justice. all of these sort of long-standing political commitments of rosa parks intersect with the emerging black power movement. and so, she does what she can to support and take part in that. according to congress, parks that quote, a heavy progressive street about her that was uncharacteristic for a religious churchgoing lady. part of what she did during the black power years was show up. as congress pointed, she spoke with her presence. black nationalists bookstore order, as you void, could that rosa parks was everywhere. she attended rallies and speeches and meetings, she signed petitions, came out for lectures and immersed herself in all the black history she could get. she protested police brutality, spoke out on behalf of black prisoners and helped found local political prisoner defense committees. she didn't necessarily want to join groups anymore give speeches, but she sought to use her stature to get attention for the cause and she came after things and let groups use her name. the 1967 detroit riot began about a mile from parks this house. she was deeply saddened by the events, but also very much contextualized what was happening in the kind -- and the resistance to change, this resistance of civil rights demands that kind of recruited over the decade. she could understand the uprising that she says as the result of resistance to change their ways needed long beforehand. that's her quote. she saw the ways that quote, the establishment of white people will antagonize and violence when the young people want to present themselves as human beings and come into their own as man, there is always something to cover them down. so she is always want to contextualize those actions in a much larger has three and a larger white resistance. she takes part in the peoples tribunal. the peoples tribunal, part of what happens during the tour at right is it becomes a police riot. there's tremendous police repression and police violence, perhaps the most egregious is three young men are killed at the algiers motel and there is no accountability. the police are not indicted and have been the detroit media are not willing to kind of pursuit any kind of stories about it. so they hold peoples tribunal and rosa parks serves on the jury for that. she is also part of the local rebuilding effort and helps be part of the virginia park district council, which builds probably the first black-owned shopping center in the country and that's breaks down -- ground in 1981. she helps run detroit friends of snake, which -- can actually comes down to the county to support the movement there. and so, in 1966, one carmichael comes to detroit to give one of his famous black power speeches, one of the first things he does from the pulpit it's call out and say mrs. parks is my hero. because she had just been in lands county, being willing to stand with him there. rosa parks helps take the poor peoples movement forward, after martin luther king is assassinated. she goes to d. c. and speaks to the solidarity day rally. she attends the black power convention in philadelphia. she's part of a group of black people, the chicago democratic convention in 1968 that refuses to endorse any candidate. she attends the national black political convention at carrie in 1972. she works on the defense committees for joanne, the wilmington ten, carrie tyler, angela davis, the irony 11. she's a long-standing opponent of the death penalty. she is an early and the suffers opponent of the u.s. involvement in vietnam. she takes part in the brigade, she helps with the winter soldiers hearings. she opposes a part tied and in the 19 eighties will join pickets outside the south african embassy against apartheid and against u.s. complicity in helping to kind of prop up the south african government. and eight days after 9/11, she joins tiny, glover and a number of civil rights activists called for justice, not to vengeance. to cry any move to war and to insist that the united states sort of work with an international law and within the international committee to bring justice. so where do we go from here? on the anniversary of the best boycott month. president obama tweeted a picture of himself on the rosa parks spies, sitting in the classics rosa parks pose. next, week as we know, the post office will issue a stamp. she is as one of my colleagues put, it the american version of a national st.. but her legacy asks much more of us than a stamp where a statue. and if we are going to claim her legacy as president obama did last month, then we must realize what it asks of us. rosa parks courage was the ability to make an independent stand, even though she and others had done it before and nothing has changed, and even when she will understood the harm that might be befall her. and to make those stands over and over and over for the course throughout her life, even when the civil rights movement gained certain victories in the civil for voting rights act, she did not rest, but continued on joining with old a new comrades to press the struggle forward, not worried about what others would think of those alliances. honoring her legacy then means summoning a similar courage. it requires acknowledging that america is not a post racial society, and that the racial and social injustice in deep manifest. it entails a profound recommitment to the goals she spent a lifetime fighting for. a criminal justice system fair and just for the people of color. unfettered voting rights, educational access and equity. an end to u.s. words of occupation, and black history in all parts of the curriculum. finally, in means heating her words to call or students, don't give up, and don't ever say the movement is dead. thank you. >> are there any questions or comments, i'll ask you to please come forward. >> i have one. i started with. i want to ask you, what made you want to write this particular story? was there something that happened? >> i mean i think i come from the story from number of different places. and i come to it as a scholar and historian but i also come to it as a political activist myself. so i think i should put that on the table. my research around this starts actually right after the funeral. i was, as i think many of us were, both kind of stunned and then also kind of dismayed by the national pageant, we could argue. that was made of her passing. and the ways that it simultaneously was supposed to be honoring her, but then she sort of seems to be this finds, even quiet, not angry, over and over, quiet not angry, quiet. and then just all about the bus. and so i did a talk that was sort of about her funeral and memorial lies a shun of the civil rights movement and the way the civil rights movement was being memorialized and ways to put it in the past, to make it is very narrow movement. and a colleague actually asked me to turn that talk into an essay for a book that she was editing. so i sit down to try -- obviously i wanted a little more meat in terms of who rosa parks was and sort of the ways that the kind of memorialization distorts this. and i start to look and i realize both how much of the story there was and i come to this research, the decade of research i did before the rosa parks book was on the civil rights movement in the north and so, sort of all the work that she had done in the north and all of the work that she had done, sort of in and alongside this emerging black power movement was really interesting to me and i think really sort of grabbed me because here and in some sense, the most iconic story was all of these stories had been trying to tell for many years. and yet, it was so puzzling to me as i started to do this research, that there was not a scholarly biography of her. i have to say, i, sometimes people ask me, what's the most surprising thing you learned about rosa parks? and more surprisingly, i learned that why is there not a scholarly biography of her? here we can say she has gotten these incredible national honors, right? everybody knows who she is and yet, she hasn't gone the treatment of a serious political figure. and if we think of lincoln, i mean his biography numbers are in the hundreds, right? king, but many figures have really kind of serious treatment and so it seems to me that rosa parks deserved to serious treatment and that simultaneously, we were sort of comfortable with in this kind of children's book version of rosa parks. and so i also sort of felt kind of humbled by that, right? that in some sense, when i first started doing it, i assume there's a biography, i just can't remember what it is. and so i think it was that process, both of seeing all of these sort of themes in her history and then simultaneously feeling like, this kind of need and i'm hoping that this book is just beginning the process. i think there is so much more work to be done on her. so i hope this is just sort of a beginning. >> i found your comments about rosa parks to be very interesting and exciting. a lot of what you described, i lived, through the riots and there was commonplace things. my question is this. how much anecdotal information did you get from individuals and from foundation members who have been quite active and we're very active with her throughout her lifetime? what kind of anecdotal information did you retain or could you just get info from other sources written about her? >> half of the book basically takes place outside of montgomery. that required a number of things. i did dozens of interviews, and a lot of them were with people in detroit, because as you alluded to, there are an amazing number of interviews and oral histories with rosa parks. a lot of them are done in to try it. they asked her what she thinks about vietnam? they do not. do they ask her what she thinks congress should be doing? no. in many ways, this part was harder to find, but a couple of things helped. the first is the black press and then the digitalization of the black press that has happened in the past decade. that was an extraordinary resource for my research because it meant i could look at decades worth of many, many, many different black newspapers. even though people didn't tend to ask her a lot about her political opinions on things outside montgomery, they did notice when she would go to things. in some sense, this was kind of the place i started in terms of trying to figure out the post montgomery story. i talked to a lot of her friends and political colleagues in detroit and nationally to try to get much more texture to this kind of, what she is doing in the sixties and seventies and eighties and i can tell you some of my favorite stories, but one of my favorites is, do people know the lawyer --? he was in the rna. he was a lawyer for the scott sisters, two women who served these incredibly long prison sentences for tiny drug charges. the older man lawyer on their case was this guy. he tells me to really interesting stories. the republic of new africa is started in detroit and it's a group started around the issue of reparations, and part of that just comes down to mississippi to set up the nation. needless to say, the fbi doesn't like this and they are surveilled and then there is this whole kind of raid of the farm and a shooting, a shoot out between the police and the rna. 11 members of the rna are arrested and they are paraded half naked through jackson a half naked. one of the neighbors calls back to the detroit police and says this is happening. someone calls connor's office to try to get them to intervene and try to protect these people so they don't just get killed, because there had been a shoot out, an officer or two had been shot. and it's rosa parks who calls the department of justice until she gets assurance in that weird way where it's like no, they are not being hurt, but nobody will get hurt. and she attributed their quickness and getting on the phone to the department of justice as saving their lives. and mario who is heading the rna at that point, says he is in prison for the next five years on conspiracy charges and she repeatedly calls and says this is rosa parks calling. just to show them that she was watching, that speaks both her firmness and her ability to do things. she and raman would go to a book store all the time and she would participate in all these discussion groups and activist groups that came out of the bookstore. and she would attend many of their forums. he was saying to me i would just go to things and say dang, that's rose again. and she wouldn't just be everywhere and he was sort of undaunted and not worried what people were going to think if she showed up to listen to some radical speaker. but she went where she wanted to go. one of the people who worked with her said in these years, she drove a huge car, apparently. a big white american car. mrs. parks was pretty small, so she was driving her big car around at night to all these events and the image and juxtaposition that she was just going in her big car. >> let me stop there. there are many stories in the book, in part in interviews, and in part, then i was able to find little mentions of things, but that would often be enough to trigger peoples memories, or vice versa. for instance, how i found out about the lance county stuff was i did an interview with dorothy and she said we went down and looked and it was listed that she kind of gives the opening. in the michigan chronicle, the black newspaper, it says one of the first things he does is calls out to her in the front row. it helped me piece these little strands together. a lot of what i did was just try to sow these little threads into a kind of bigger tapestry. but i hope i started it and i hope other people will go even farther than i could. >> you indicated earlier that when you started your research earlier you were surprised there was not much about her. why do you think she has been marginalized so? >> i think we think we know her. because we think we know her, for instance, there is a new incredibly kind of vibrant scholarship on the black freedom struggle over the last ten or 15 years and there are all these new scholars doing great work. i think you just assume it has been done with parks. i think i assumed this too. someone else had done it or we sort of knew who she was, so we had to look at other stories, other activists. i think it kind of speaks to what i tried to speak about at the beginning, which is this kind of paradox in sort of the way she is honored but in some sense trapped or kind of that she's honored but just in this very small way and so she is relegated to being a symbol and so symbols don't have to have like a whole history, and i think that's related to her being a woman, and i think there is a gendered aspect of this as well. that's both in terms of how we imagine what her story is or was and the kinds of questions we ask, so just to tell you another funny story. as i am on the trail of the lands county story, i call a college historian who this is one of his specialty is and i am trying to get him and he sort of says we did something. i said i am trying to figure out the bigger story here, but i think there is a sort of sense that because she's so famous, she did these other things and we would know it. i think it might be the opposite. because she's so famous for this moment, it kind of obscures all the other things and the kind of much broader history and the kind of broader coalitions that she's working in. >> i don't mean to monopolize, but the other point i would like to make based on what you said about the funeral, i also was at her funeral because she was funeralized in the museum of african american history or before she was shipped off to washington, d. c.. a lot of what you said about the ceremonial myths might be true. however, but i observed in detroit from the people that stood in line hours upon hours, days upon days, stretched around the corner of that building, a lot of her history is an anecdotal memories of individuals that knew her, which might be part of the reason that you are having such a hard time pulling it out, because it is oral history. many people in detroit know rosa parks. they know about the montgomery aspect, obviously, because it was national. but those that live in detroit know what she did in the labor movement. my mother was in the labor movement and i saw her in that role, as i saw my mother, who was the first black secretary of the uaw. people know what she did. the problem you will have is because it's anecdotal and because it's oral history, a lot of the people that knew her intimately are gone. the history is gone with it. the perspective will be tainted, because it will be filtered through the eyes of people who really didn't know her as well. >> i think what people did in terms of her passing on the ground and the people standing in line and standing outside during her funeral, i think many people across the country did memorials for her. and in the book, i'm trying to draw a distinction because the -- versus the ways that people -- and i think we will see this on monday with the centennial. right? i think there are many people who are going to be finding real meaning and talking about the substantive legacy, but i think the other way the centennial will be used on monday is to sort of put the movement in the past. in some sense, it is a feel good about ourselves, look how great we, are honoring rosa parks. that is where i think the kind of danger lies. and i think this is not just about parks. there are uses of the civil rights movement. she fights really hard for a king holiday and then sort of sees the king holiday turn into this fuzzy dreamy thing that it now is. the substance of the activists that she knew starts to get kind of lost in the holiday, and i imagine she might have the same critique in terms of some of the ways that she is honored and the ways that kind of the substance of her. in terms of the labor stuff, let me tell you another story. during the boycott, local 600 wants to bring rosa parks to detroit to speak to the local 600. this is a real kind of militant local in the uaw. it had been purged of its communists and was very much seen by walter luther as a troublemaking local. walter actually opposes local 600 wanting to bring rosa parks to detroit, but they raised the money, and they bring her anyways, kind of above his objections. obviously, six or seven years later, ruth would be at the front of the march on washington and i think he seems like sort of this real civil rights stalwart. but he was not always there. so they bring her to detroit. most of the hotels in detroit are not open to black people so they put her up in the garfield hotel and she makes a number of very important connections at that meeting that will draw on politically and personally when they move back. not move back, move here, sorry. so she has a long-standing relationship with black labor. and interestingly, it is the detroit naacp is sort of a big but in some sense in those years it was a very middle class and not very activist branch. again, when she first moves there. there's a little naacp chapter in river rouge and river rouge is a kind of bedroom community to detroit but it's also full of autoworkers, and it's full of local 600 autoworkers, in particular. and it is that little naacp group that actually gets the national naacp to help rosa parks. it is those sort of militant and that little river rouge chapter, it's super interesting. they sort of cut a very different path. they're doing all sorts of boycotts of the banks, because they're not hiring black people. and then they actually, after protests is over they pass a realization calling on the national naacp to come out against his assassination. obviously the naacp doesn't go for that too much. so it's this little river rouge chapter that kind of makes the national naacp after this article runs a jet that i was talking about. it's this river rouge chapter that gets the naacp to kind of help her, right? they sort of step in. so she's sort of she has that kind of long history with kind of labor in detroit and liberally also was like a huge kind of protector and supporter of her, particularly in those years which were i think very hard years for her family. and the mid-50, nine 60 61, those years. >> i don't have a question but i've got several comments i'd like to make. first of all, since the book arrived at our house two or three days ago. i've read as much as i could because i wanted to see when you had written before i talked with you again. and i'm very much impressed with your characterization of mrs. parks in those early days. well written. i look forward to reading the rest of the book. second, when mrs. parks was in school in 1955, she told us later on that while she was there, she decided she would never again give up her seated on the bus. which again feeds into her characterization of her being a real activist and the kind of person who is full of bravery. third comment. you may or may not be aware of the fact that many of those young people that she lead in the naacp youth council are active participants in the churches and the society here in montgomery today after all these years. and they force trivial comments. there was a period of time when i was with john conyers, periodically from time to time and every time i saw him, he would laughingly complain that he was the only member of congress who had a staff person who got more invitations to speak than heeded. >> he told me this funny story. he told me this funny story. so apparently at some point in the midst of this. she comes in and wants to have a wage reduction salary and he talks about it as the only wage reduction discussion he ever had. because she was feeling guilty, i think that she was traveling so much in doing so much public appearances and worried that he was going to feel like she was, kind of taking advantage or not living up to her sponsor reality. so he told me that he was like, of course i want to doing those things and then i think to him, it was just so horrifying that there is rosa parks saying you should reduce my salary because i'm doing all these public appearances.. >> i just want to make a comment. you talked about rosa parks when she's an island. when she came back she said, would you going to do? and it's a real change a book of children. and then you think about children today and one of the things they know really is that she's coming a person on the bus. and you think about the fact that we live basically in a soundbite world. so we only know the soundbite. so the thing is, how do we get to begin to uncover and look what's beneath all that? i think that's one important. as you live in this world, it's going to be more and more soundbites. you know, how do we begin to look at this and ask what does this really mean? and that brings me to the fact that i think we have to begin to look at what that really stood for. you know, especially if you look now. that for me, especially being at the museum. that rosa parks did was she taught us to do the right thing, instead she could've easily just gotten off the bus. and most times, we do the expedient thing, even though we know with the right thing to do is. and we say we're going to get back to it, and we never do. so i think as we talk about her and think about her as we honor her on her birthday, we begin to think about rightness and expediency. and sometimes, we have to stop the bleeding. it's important. but once the bleeding has stopped, we have to begin to look at what is right. >> when impeaching bad, that moment when she sort of that did that thinking nothing's ever going to happen. and people are going to stay unified. because i think that's a feeling that people have today, right? i students often wish they look back on those years and say, well back in the day, people were so much more unified, you know, i wish i lived back in that day. black people today aren't unified and then you're like, these are the same fears that these people that were studying grappled with, right? history doesn't present itself like in neon like history is happening, please step up. and it's scary and it doesn't. that kind of worry, right? if we sort of think about the weekend before the first day of the boycott. how worried people were,? that the words we have are the worries that they had and so i think also, i think humanizing the history so that you can see how to make the kinds of choices. i think by humanizing, it i think it also makes it -- you can see how people made choices and how people were able to make choices. so sort of one as the story goes, when nixon goes and calls martin luther king back at six in the morning and king says, well, can you call me back? i am brand-new year, we have a one month old baby, it's six in the morning. can you call me back? he doesn't know he's martin luther king. he's just martin luther king, right? and he obviously has -- he has the conviction but it's six in the morning and he has a new baby, ht

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