The true history of civil rights movements is revealed by shattering the Rosa Parks myth

The true history of civil rights movements is revealed by shattering the Rosa Parks myth

Sanitized histories of the Civil Rights Movement have erased the long history of activism and struggle that defined the life of Rosa Parks long before she defied Jim Crow codes on a Montgomery bus. Yet Rosa Parks’s dedication to the Black freedom struggle preceded the Montgomery Bus Boycott by decades. She joined the campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys in 1932, and was elected secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943. As an NAACP member, Parks investigated the gang-rape of Recy Taylor, a Black woman from Alabama, and helped organize the Committee for Equal Justice for Recy...

Sanitized histories of the Civil Rights Movement have erased the long history of activism and struggle that defined the life of Rosa Parks long before she defied Jim Crow codes on a Montgomery bus. Yet Rosa Parks’s dedication to the Black freedom struggle preceded the Montgomery Bus Boycott by decades. She joined the campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys in 1932, and was elected secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943. As an NAACP member, Parks investigated the gang-rape of Recy Taylor, a Black woman from Alabama, and helped organize the Committee for Equal Justice for Recy Taylor, which brought national attention to the systemic sexual assault of Black women and helped lay the organizing foundations of the future Civil Rights Movement. Biographer Jeanne Theoharis and documentarian Yoruba Richen join The Marc Steiner show to set the record straight on the many under-appreciated contributions of Rosa Parks. Jeanne Theoharis is the author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and a professor of political science at the Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
Yoruba Richen is a film director and producer, and the co-director of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. She is the director of the documentary program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism of the City of New York.
Studio/Post-Production: Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. An updated version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner: Sam Cooke, A Change Is Going To Come. It’s one of the themes of our movement. It holds the power of struggle to end racism and for freedom and equality, and was made part of the heartbeat of this film we’re about to talk about today. So welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us. We’re about to celebrate the 110th anniversary of the birth of Mrs. Rosa Parks, an iconic figure in our nation’s history, but whose real story has been so sanitized that it created this myth of sainthood that she was just a tired old seamstress who was arrested on her way home for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated public bus system in Montgomery, Alabama that led to the 1955 Montgomery Bus boycott, that gave birth to the civil rights movement and the fame of Dr. Martin Luther King.
Well, she did refuse to give up that seat. She was arrested, and it did raise the profile of King to the national spotlight. But Mrs. Rosa Parks was an activist to her bones, a fighter for Black freedom and justice. She was secretary of the local NCAAP, that was an activist branch led by the union leader, E.D. Nixon. She fought for the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s. Her grandfather liked Marcus Garvey and took no nonsense from racist whites in Alabama. Well, let me stop there and we’ll catch up to all of that in this conversation. The myth of Mrs. Rosa Parks was broken in apart by a book and a documentary, both called The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. The original book was written by Jeanne Theoharis, who is the author or co-author of 11 books and numerous articles on civil rights, Black power movements, and race in America.
Her biography, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, won a 2014 NAACP Image Award and the Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. And this powerful documentary, the Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks was co-directed by Yoruba Richen and Johanna Hamilton. Yoruba Richen is our guest today. She’s an award-winning and amazing filmmaker, director and screenwriter, and producer. Her film, The Green Book: Guide to Freedom was broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel to record audiences and was awarded the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in...