Jeanne Theoharis

The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a "helpmate" but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband's activism in these directions. Moving from "the histories we get" to "the histories we need," Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and "polite racism" in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice - which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred.

The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

A More Beautiful and Terrible History

Brandy Colbert

This biography examines Parks's life and 60 years of activism and brings the multifaceted, decades-long civil rights movement in the North and South to life for young readers. Rosa Parks is one of the most well-known Americans today, but much of what is known and taught about her is incomplete, distorted, and just plain wrong. In this young readers' edition of the NAACP Image Award--winning The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, Jeanne Theoharis shatters the myths that Parks was meek, accidental, tired, or middle class. She reveals a lifelong freedom fighter whose activism began two decades before her historic stand that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and continued for 40 years after. Readers will understand what it was like to be Parks, from meeting her husband, Raymond, who showed her the possibility of collective activism, to her years of frustrated struggle before the boycott, to the decade of suffering that followed for her family after her bus arrest. The book follows Parks to Detroit, after her family was forced to leave Montgomery, Alabama, where she spent the second half of her life and reveals her activism alongside a growing Black Power movement and beyond. Because Rosa Parks was active for 60 years, in the North as well as the South, her story provides a broader and more accurate view of the Black freedom struggle across the 20th century. Theoharis shows young readers how the national fable of Parks and the civil rights movement--celebrated in schools during Black History Month--has warped what we know about Parks and stripped away the power and substance of the movement. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks illustrates how the movement radically sought to expose and eradicate racism in jobs, housing, schools, and public services, as well as police brutality and the over-incarceration of Black people--and how Rosa Parks was a key player throughout. Rosa Parks placed her greatest hope in young people--in their vision, resolve, and boldness to take the struggle forward. As a young adult, she discovered Black history, and it sustained her across her life. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks will help do that for a new generation.

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

Komozi Woodard

The story of the black freedom struggle in America has been overwhelmingly male-centric, starring leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. With few exceptions, black women have been perceived as supporting actresses; as behind-the-scenes or peripheral activists, or rank and file party members. But what about Vicki Garvin, a Brooklyn-born activist who became a leader of the National Negro Labor Council and guide to Malcolm X on his travels through Africa? What about Shirley Chisholm, the first black Congresswoman? From Rosa Parks and Esther Cooper Jackson, to Shirley Graham DuBois and Assata Shakur, a host of women demonstrated a lifelong commitment to radical change, embracing multiple roles to sustain the movement, founding numerous groups and mentoring younger activists. Helping to create the groundwork and continuity for the movement by operating as local organizers, international mobilizers, and charismatic leaders, the stories of the women profiled in Want to Start a Revolution? help shatter the pervasive and imbalanced image of women on the sidelines of the black freedom struggle. Contributors: Margo Natalie Crawford, Prudence Cumberbatch, Johanna Fernández, Diane C. Fujino, Dayo F. Gore, Joshua Guild, Gerald Horne, Ericka Huggins, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Joy James, Erik McDuffie, Premilla Nadasen, Sherie M. Randolph, James Smethurst, Margaret Stevens, and Jeanne Theoharis.

Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle

Want to Start a Revolution?

2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work – Biography / Auto Biography 2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013 The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks examines her six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement Presenting a corrective to the popular notion of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who, with a single act, birthed the modern civil rights movement, Theoharis provides a revealing window into Parks’s politics and years of activism. She shows readers how this civil rights movement radical sought—for more than a half a century—to expose and eradicate the American racial-caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice.

Charles Payne

Local Black Freedom Movements in America

Groundwork

Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

Athan G. Theoharis

This book ... on postwar America ... looks at civil rights and civil liberties in tandem and does so over the past fifty years. It merges two historical approaches - of looking at America from the view of those in the highest seats of power and from the perspectives of those too often denied political and economic access. It shows that the civil rights movement was not just a southern movement but spanned the nation; not just a movement for African Americans but waged by other people of color, including Latinos and Native Americans as well as women of all races; and not just a struggle that began in the mid-1950s and ended in the mid-1960s. It was more varies ... more grassroots, and more broad than many other studies of the postwar period have shown. -Pref.

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in America Since 1945

These Yet to be United States

Now adapted for readers ages 12 and up, the award-winning biography that examines Parks’s life and 60 years of radical activism and brings the civil rights movement in the North and South to life Rosa Parks is one of the most well-known Americans today, but much of what is known and taught about her is incomplete, distorted, and just plain wrong. Adapted for young people from the NAACP Image Award—winning The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert shatter the myths that Parks was meek, accidental, tired, or middle class. They reveal a lifelong freedom fighter whose activism began two decades before her historic stand that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and continued for 40 years after. Readers will understand what it was like to be Parks, from standing up to white supremacist bullies as a young person to meeting her husband, Raymond, who showed her the possibility of collective activism, to her years of frustrated struggle before the boycott, to the decade of suffering that followed for her family after her bus arrest. The book follows Parks to Detroit, after her family was forced to leave Montgomery, Alabama, where she spent the second half of her life and reveals her activism alongside a growing Black Power movement and beyond. Because Rosa Parks was active for 60 years, in the North as well as the South, her story provides a broader and more accurate view of the Black freedom struggle across the twentieth century. Theoharis and Colbert show young people how the national fable of Parks and the civil rights movement—celebrated in schools during Black History Month—has warped what we know about Parks and stripped away the power and substance of the movement. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks illustrates how the movement radically sought to expose and eradicate racism in jobs, housing, schools, and public services, as well as police brutality and the over-incarceration of Black people—and how Rosa Parks was a key player throughout. Rosa Parks placed her greatest hope in young people—in their vision, resolve, and boldness to take the struggle forward. As a young adult, she discovered Black history, and it sustained her across her life. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks will help do that for a new generation.

Adapted for Young People

Alejandra Marchevsky

Originalism is the practice of reviewing constitutional cases by seeking to discern the framers' and ratifiers' intent. Original Sin argues that the "jurisprudence of original intent," represented on the current Supreme Court by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, has failed on its own terms. Attempts to determine the framers' intent have not brought greater determinacy and legitimacy to the process of constitutional interpretation. Instead, the method has been marked by the very flaws—including self-interested reasoning and the manipulation of doctrine—that originalists argue marred the jurisprudence of the judicial "activists" of the Warren Court. Original Sin brings a rigorous review of the performance of the "new originalists" to the debate, applying their methodology to real cases. Marcosson focuses on the judicial decisions of Clarence Thomas, an avowed originalist who nevertheless advocates "color blind" readings of the Constitution which are at odds with the framers' ideas concerning anti-miscegenation and other laws. After critiquing what he sees as a troubling use of originalism and explaining why it has failed to provide a consistent basis for constitutional decision-making, the author goes on to offer an alternative approach: one that lends greater legitimacy to the Court's interpretations of the Constitution.

Jeanne Theoharis

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