Who is Rosa Parks?

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:01

This week to celebrate Black History Month in the US we are shining a light on one of the most influential figures in American history. Her relentless efforts for social justice and equality made her a powerful voice of the civil rights movement.

And her work and legacy still endures today. So today we remember the life, the work, and the legacy of this great individual as I ask, who is Rosa Parks? Welcome to America a History Podcast.

I'm Liam Heffernan, and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places, and the events that make the USA what it is today. Joining me on the show today is Dr.

ican Americans and Apartheid,: 1945

Dr. Nicholas Grant: 00:01:16

Hi, Liam. Thanks for having me.

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:18

Yeah, it feels like it's been a while. It's good to have you back on the podcast.

And our special guest this week is a distinguished professor of political science at Brooklyn College of City University of New York.

She's the author of numerous books and articles on the civil rights and black power movements and the politics of race and education in the US including the rebellious life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and the upcoming King of the north, about, as you can probably guess, Martin Luther King.

And we'll link to both of those books in the show notes if you want to find out more about them. A big, big welcome to the show. Jean Theoharis, thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Yeah, it's a real, real pleasure to get you on the show.

They're really. Isn't anyone better to join us to talk about Rosa Parks?

So I'm going to just like dive straight into this and get as much out of you as I as I can in the next 30 minutes. Let's start with Rosa Parks childhood and early life. What was that like?

Dr. Jeanne Theoharis: 00:02:14

,: 1913

ually when she's six. This is: 1919

And part of what happens in the United States is as black soldiers return from the war, there is an uptake of white violence around the country to make sure that these black soldiers don't get any big ideas. And what that means in Pine Level is there is an upsurge of Klan Violence.

And so her grandfather will sit out at night with his shotgun to protect the family home.

And a six year old, Rosa wants to sit with him, and in fact does sit with him many nights, as she puts it, because she wants to see him shoot a Ku Kluxer. So this is a, in some ways a different place to kind of begin our story.

It begins and Rosa Parks, for her entire life will have a belief in the personal right of self defense. It begins, right, with this idea that we don't have to take this. Rosa Parks is a reserved kid, but she again has this feisty side.

When this white bully starts to threaten her and her younger brother Sylvester, she picks up a brick and threatens him back, which she thinks is like totally within her rights. And she gets home and she tells her grandmother about it, and her grandmother is horrified and terrified. And it just is like, you can't do this.

You're going to be lynched before you're grown. And, you know, and a young preteen Rosa Parks sort of argues with her grandmother.

Basically, I would rather be lynched than not be able to say I don't like it, right? So here we have this like tension and attention that she's gonna have to struggle with her whole life, right?

Which is that standing up, right, is a way to. And again, in the McAuley household, you know, part of self respect was demanding respect of your person.

And yet that demand often could put you in the line of fire, both in terms of violence, in terms of economic violence. So our story of Parks really begins with that feistiness at home.

d that is Raymond Parks. It's: 1931

He's about a decade older than her, and he is working on the Scottsboro case, if we want to remember Scottsboro. Nine young black men riding the rails, like many people were doing during the Great Depression, right? Basically riding the train for free.

They get in an altercation with some white boys on the train who are also doing so, and they kind of win and force the boys off the white boys off the train at Scottsboro, Alabama. And then those boys go and get the police.

And these nine young men are arrested originally for riding the train free, but then they discover two white women in one of the other train cars and they think these boys are up to no good. And so those nine young black men are arrested quickly tried for rape. And all but the youngest, who's 12, sentenced to death.

So a local movement grows in Alabama to try to protect and defend the Scottsboro Boys from being executed. And one of those local activists is Raymond Parks. And he's working on that when they meet.

And very much Raymond kind of opens the possibility, I think, for Rosa Parks of kind of collective challenge, right? She has this kind of spirit from home, but this idea of like, we can be the people to organize, right, really gets nurtured with Raymond.

ey get married in December of: 1932

But as we're gonna see, that will change over their relationship, and she will become the more public activist, and he will be more behind the scenes.

Liam Heffernan: 00:06:40

It feels like, from what you said, you know, from her early experiences of watching her family sit outside with a shotgun, waiting for the white men, and this very early exposure to black. The sort of the racial tensions that were. That were in the south, that must have been really formative in creating this.

This sense that you can only really meet white aggression with aggression.

Dr. Jeanne Theoharis: 00:07:08

I think partly with aggression. But I think what. And also I think part of what Raymond brings to the table is this, the power of organizing, right?

nd I think we see that by the: 1940

e local NAACP. And so this is: 1943

We're in the midst of World War II. And she is galled by the fact that black people, including her younger brother Sylvester, are serving overseas.

And yet most black people cannot vote at home, are not registered. And so she wants to register to vote. So she goes to this NAACP meeting. She's the only woman there that day. They ask her to take notes.

She says she's too timid to say no. Then it's branch election day. They ask her to be branch secretary again. She feels like she can't say no.

So Rosa Parks becomes secretary of the Montgomery branch, that very first meeting. From there, we're going to see over the next dozen years. This is 43, 12 years before her bus stand.

Rosa Parks will be a key member of the naacp, and with one of Montgomery's most stalwart Activists. That's a man by the name of Ed Nixon.

She and Nixon will work to transform Montgomery's branch into a much more activist chapter, both around issues like Scottsboro, like issues of wrongful accusations, issues of the law not protecting black people, and particularly black women, from white violence and the vote.

Liam Heffernan: 00:08:57

Nick, I guess to wrap some context around all of this, if we zoom out a bit in terms of the wider civil rights movements and the issues more nationally, what was the environment here that Rosa Parks was operating in?

Dr. Nicholas Grant: 00:09:12

Yeah, I think what's really brilliant about Gene's book, the Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, is that you kind of put Parkes into this broader context. Right.

And Jean's just talking there about the context of the Second World War and what become known as the double victory campaign.

Like the idea that many African Americans came out of the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the main African American newspapers of the time, this campaign for a double victory against Jim Crow at home and against fascism overseas. And it kind of led to a lot of African Americans thinking about, is Jim Crow a form of fascism at home? And making those kinds of connections.

And you'll see, like, later on that a lot of people who were involved in the, quote, unquote, classical moment of the civil rights movement, which a lot of people see Parkes is inaugurating.

There's lots of problems with that timeline, as we've discussed in previous episodes, served in the military, and those experiences that Parks is talking about with her brother Sylvester, fighting for freedom and democracy and being denied that at home is really, really important.

I think what's really crucial, and I think Jean's already alluded to this as well, is the activist work that she's doing is incredibly dangerous as well. Right. So she's trying to register to vote. I think she tries that herself three times.

She's leading these campaigns, which are really, really important in terms of voter registration. That's really dangerous work to be carrying out. So, again, we'll come to this. Right?

This is so much more than the person who didn't want to give up her seat on the bus. I think the other thing that might be worth mentioning is that she has kind of a passing connection.

And maybe Jean can go into this more, because I got this from her book, is with Ella Baker, who's a field worker for the NAACP at this time. She goes on to be a kind of key advisor with King Southern Christian Leadership conference and with SNCC and CoR later on.

the south at the time in the: 1940

But in terms of an organization like how to organize effectively in community, so there's all of these connections and links going on, and it's this real moment of, like, grassroots organizing and collective power building and institutional building in terms that will lay the groundwork for. For what is to come in the 50s and 60s. In terms of the civil rights movement.

Dr. Jeanne Theoharis: 00:11:46

I mean, and just to jump in there on Ella Baker, I think the other thing about Ella Baker is that Ella Baker will mentor Rosa Parks. Like Nick is saying, Ella Baker's doing this kind of local leadership building kind of workshops. She's the director of branches at this point.

Parks and Nixon go to, I think, two different ones. And I think for Parks, it does a couple of things.

One is getting to see a woman like Ella Baker in leadership as she's figuring out how to be a woman activist. And again, at a time when this is very dangerous, Raymond was very worried for her safety.

And so I think Ella Baker plays this kind of role in terms of both inspirational and kind of mentoring. Ella Baker will then, Rosa Parks says, will stay at their. The Parks are living at the Cleveland Court projects.

And when, anytime Baker comes to town, Baker will stay at the Parks apartment.

So I think I just wanted to stress one thing that we're going to see over the course of Rosa Parks's life is both the people who mentor her and then the ways that she becomes a mentor and facilitator for other people's activities.

Liam Heffernan: 00:12:57

Yeah, I think we. We probably need to give a whole episode to. To Ella Baker because it's not the first time that she's come up on this.

On this podcast and probably won't be the last.

And, you know, you've both sort of explained that there's, you know, there's a very organized, you know, effort here around, you know, the civil rights movement, and that Rosa Parks really is just, you know, one. One part of that, albeit an important part. So let's just address the Montgomery Bus boycott here, because it's.

It's become a real kind of headline moment in this movement. And why is that?

Dr. Jeanne Theoharis: 00:13:32

I think it's a couple of things. I mean, I think the first thing, and you just alluded to this is Rosa Parks, and Nick did, too.

Rosa Parks is not the first person to resist on the bus, and this is not her first act of bus resistance.

So I think the first thing we need to understand is that there is a trickle of people in Montgomery, mostly women, but not exclusively, who resist on the bus in that decade from World War II to Rosa Parks. And I think we want to remember that movements don't pop off, as my students would say, at the first injustice.

thing has happened. One case,: 1954

She decides to file a legal case. In response, police rape her daughter. Then also in response, the state ties up her appeal so it never comes to court.

ject that Rosa parks knows in: 1950

One of the things that some bus drivers would do is they would make black people pay in the front, but then get off the bus and re board in the back. And many people, including Rosa Parks, refused to do this and had been put off the bus for refusing to do it.

nds up killing him. So that's: 1950

In March of: 1955

Claudette Colvin is in Rosa Parks's, like, youth chapter of the naacp. But a couple of things about the Colvin case.

First, Colvin is arrested on a segregation charge, but also because the police manhandle her and she sort of tries to get their hands off her. She is also arrested on a disturbing the peace and assaulting an officer charge. Even though she's this petite, petite young woman.

And interestingly, perhaps because the judge is being very savvy and doesn't want a legal challenge, the judge drops the segregation charge and the disturbing the peace charge and only convicts her on the assault charge. So it's going to make it harder to Use Colvin's case for a legal challenge. And then on top of that, Colvin is sort of working class.

She's young, she's feisty. She stops straightening her hair after her trial.

She says she's not going to, you know, she's not going to straighten her hair until this mess gets straightened up. Right. So she's seen by many, many of Montgomery's sort of black leaders as too feisty. Right.

Like they don't trust the young person to kind of be the face and so that outrage. And they also take a petition to the city for better respectful treatment, and the city agrees to things they never implement.

But I do want to say, even though we don't see a mass movement around Colvin, I don't believe that if Colvin hadn't done what she did that people would have rose up with Parks. One of the kind of new myths is the pitting of Colvin against Parks.

And I think that's really problematic for various reasons, both because Parks supported Colvin's case, but also because I think it misses the roles that if we sort of understand the accumulation that Colvin plays in, in moving Montgomery's black community to a point where this has just gone too far. Because some black people in Montgomery will say around Rosa Parks arrest that the city had made promises they didn't keep.

,: 1955

So what that means is that black people can shop there, but they can't try on clothes.

She's an assistant tailor in the men's shop, which means she spends her day tailoring white men's suits, basically, as she puts it, making life easy and clever for white people. So she's going home. She actually lets a bus pass because it's crowded and goes to the drugstore.

And she gets on the bus somewhere around 5:30, and she sits in the middle section. So by the terms of Alabama segregation, the front section is reserved for white people.

The back section is reserved for black people, and then there's the middle. And black people are entitled to sit there. But as she would put it, on the whim of the driver can be asked to move.

So a couple stops after she gets on, the bus fills up and there is one white man left standing. And by the terms of Alabama segregation, everyone in Rosa Parks is aisle. So she's sitting next to a black Man.

And then there are two black women across the aisle. Everyone's going to have to get up. The bus driver notices and says something. She says. The first time he says something, nobody does anything.

Then he gets more threatening. And she says, reluctantly, the other three get up.

But she says that she had been pushed as far as she could be pushed, that if she got up, she approved of this treatment, and she did not approve. And so she decides she's not going to get up. And she actually lets the man pass.

And then she slides over to the window and waits for what's going to happen. Now, we want to remember she has been put off the bus before, so there's nothing. This is both a very dangerous act, and she.

She knows that she could get hurt by doing so.

Also, the bus driver, James Blake, that day makes a choice because, again, he had actually thrown Rosa Parks off the bus a decade earlier for refusing to board in the back. Other bus drivers had.

So when the police come on the bus, she says she hears them talk to the driver, that they just want to evict her, take her off the bus. And the driver makes the decision that he wants her arrested. So she is arrested and she's taken to jail.

And later that night, she is bailed out, both by her husband and then by Edie Nixon. Someone on the bus has gone to tell Edie Nixon what happened.

And Edie Nixon and a white couple who is one of the few civil rights supporting families, Clifford and Virginia Durr, come, and they go back to the Parks apartment to talk about what comes next.

Because once Nixon realizes that she has not been hurt, and there was a fear that she would have been, he's delighted, because she's the test case they want. She's 42, she's active in her church, and most importantly, they know she's brave, right?

And that bravery is crucial to, like, having somebody be a test case, given what's going to come. At first, Raymond is not supportive. Raymond is terrified that she'll be killed.

And Raymond is also terrified that the community will do to Rosa what they did to Claudette Colvin, which is to kind of be angry for a while, but then not stick with her. But they talk. And late that night, she decides to go forward.

And she calls a young black lawyer that she knows through the naacp, who's a friend, his name is Fred Gray, to ask him if he will represent her. And even later that night, this is still the night she's arrested.

Fred Gray calls a woman by the name of Joanne Robinson, who's the head of the Women's Political Council.

And the Women's Political Council had been organizing around bus segregation to tell her that Rosa Parks has decided to plead not guilty and go forward with the case.

And it is Joanne Robinson and the women of the Women's Political Council that night who decide to call for a one day boycott on Monday, the day that Rosa Parks is going to be arraigned in court. And Joanne Robinson goes out in the middle of the night.

She's a professor at Alabama State College and with the help of a colleague and two students, basically sneaks into the mimeograph room and runs off 35,000 leaflets that say another woman has been arrested on the bus boycott on Monday.

Liam Heffernan: 00:22:17

Thinking about how this and also how Rosa Parks herself became a bit of a figurehead for the movement, was it kind of right place, right time?

Because, you know, it does feel like there's a lot of people that deserve a lot of credit for their involvement in the civil rights movement and in all of these kind of organized efforts to create the change they did. What made Rosa Parks so special?

Dr. Jeanne Theoharis: 00:22:44

I think it's something perhaps more profound than right place, right time, which is that the bonds of community and the organizing that they had been doing kind of come together. So many things come together. Right. First we have Rosa Parks friendship with Fred Gray. Fred Gray is a new young black lawyer. Right.

So we have Fred Gray. The Women's Political Council has been organizing. Gray knows Joanne Robinson. Right. They're ready. They've been thinking about this.

In many ways, they were frustrated with like the kind of dispersing of outrage around Colvin. Right. So they in some ways are ready. Next we have Edie Nixon, who is a seasoned organizer.

So on Friday morning, this is the morning after Rosa Parks is arrested. So I should say Joanne Robinson called Edie Nixon in the middle of the night to tell him that they're going to do this boycott on Monday.

And so first thing Friday morning, Edie Nixon, knowing that they need to get the ministers, the political ministers, most of Montgomery's black ministers were not political, but some were on board to be able to get to the wider black community. And so he calls Ralph Abernathy and then around 6am he calls a newish young minister in town. And this is Martin Luther K.

Martin Luther King is 26 years old. They've been in Montgomery for about a year. They've just had their first baby a couple weeks earlier.

Nixon wants to use King's church for a meeting that night to get the community on board. And like most of us, when somebody calls you at six in the morning with some sort of scheme, King, like we would says, well, can you call me back?

And I say that because there's not like some magic thing that happens where this is like all in place, right? People are going to have to make decisions. Parks makes decisions, decisions. King, you know that this is nothing foreordained about what happens.

And in many ways, part of what I think is the essence of the courage of Rosa Parks is her ability that day and in other days to do things that people have tried before that she's tried before that haven't worked, right? It's that courage, that courage. It's like this is a line. I'm saying no. Even though there's nothing to suggest that this is going to go my way at all.

And it might hurt me. And in fact, it does hurt her. Rosa Parks will get fired from her job five weeks in. She never finds steady work ever again in Montgomery.

So back to King. King. A few hours later, Nixon calls him back and King is like, yes, you can use my church.

And so we're going to see King in the coming days and weeks kind of step into this leadership. But again, there's nothing foreordained about it.

So to me, how I see this is a number of people who had been working and preparing are at a place also at a breaking point, right? Because this is also takes a tremendous amount of courage because people are going to, you know, King's house will be bombed.

A number of other leaders house will be bombed. Both Rosa and Raymond lose their jobs. They never find steady work.

So basically, like the boycott plunges this Parks family into, into kind of a deep poverty and they're not well off to begin with.

And I think that the other thing I want to mention is I think there's this kind of mythic sense of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, that everyone's just walking and certainly people are walking.

But what sustains a 382 day boycott is this incredible organized carpool system that the Montgomery Improvement association, which is the organization that forms that first day of the boycott, creates to kind of give people rides around town. And so they set up 40 pickup stations. At the height of it, they're giving 10 to 15,000 rides a day. It's massive and massively organized.

And the police harass it merciless. I mean, the police are constantly giving them tickets. Joanne Robinson gets like 17 tickets in two months.

But I think that level of organization is also key. And in some ways, what we forget about the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Dr. Nicholas Grant: 00:26:48

Can I just come in? Just because I think what's so great about Jean's book and stud book length project on Rosa Parks is that it simultaneously centers Parks.

It's called the rebellious life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, but de centers her at the same time. Right?

So you see all of these networks of solidarity, of collective action, these friendships and how important they are as well in those personal relationships, all kind of coalescing. Right? And the temptation. Right. Is.

And we'll come to this later, I'm sure, is like we hold up Parkes as this mythic figure and we kind of forget all of that work that went into the Montgomery Bus boycott that Jean just explained. And I think the other thing is that that kind of power and courage is replicated in numerous different places as well.

And I don't know if Jean agrees, but I think for me, and when I talk about it to my students, there are other boycotts and kind of movements like that previously, but it does provide a really important model and a model that's ultimately successful for civil rights organizing afterwards, both in terms of legal strategy and also as a boycott campaign and how to run that.

So even if we take the kind of lens back a little bit away from Montgomery, we can kind of see that being replicated over and over again in subsequent years. Right. And that model of success, I think is really, really important.

I mean, to be glib as well, also shows the importance of having access to like a departmental printer for your activism as well. I really like that. I remember that reading that in your book and thinking, oh, that's really handy.

And I've subsequently used that for trade union work at my own institution. Running off things is really helpful. But I think that's the really important point, right? Is that, of course, Parks is special.

She's a really important person, but also she is indebted to and part of these much bigger networks. And that's how things change, right? That's how situations change. You can't do it alone.

So the idea of like just elevating her without all of acknowledging all of that other work and all of those other contributions is really problematic.

Liam Heffernan: 00:28:56

Off the back of what you just said. You know, I wonder if because these.

These events get kind of isolated and sort of celebrated without as much consideration as perhaps is due to all of the work that led up to that and the other events that sort of feed into this and this whole network of action that is surrounding it, do you think it. It slightly misrepresents the movement as A whole.

In that, you know, we can look back at history of me as, you know, a white man in the uk sort of thinks about these moments, you know, Selma at Montgomery and, you know, these other big sort of newsworthy events and think, oh, okay, that's, that's the point. Everything changed. But actually, it was just. It was, it was a significant step in, in a very long journey. Right.

Dr. Jeanne Theoharis: 00:29:44

I mean, I think. I mean, I think there's two questions here, right?

I think there's the place of the Montgomery bus boycott in an emerging civil rights movement and the ways that it inspires people at the time. And that happens for a couple of different reasons. I think the first is the city doubles down.

One of the boycotts Nick is referring to happens in Tallahassee the year before. And what we see city leaders do there and in Baton Rouge, and city leaders do different things.

And the Baton Rouge one, this is true, I should say, of the Montgomery bus boycott. The demands at first are modest. They are asking for first come, first serve, respectful treatment and black bus drivers.

And some earlier bus boycotts had succeeded within a couple of weeks because with that demand of respectful treatment, first come, first serve, Montgomery city leadership refuses that and kind of doubles down. And then two things happen that are going to change. Why, in some ways, Montgomery will be this, like, inspiring example. The first is.

Well, three things. First, King's house gets bombed, right? So sort of violence and, and the way that violence and that they.

They sort of expect that this combination of violence. And then the city goes after the boycotts leaders and they indict 89 boycott leaders.

And what they're thinking is going to happen is that it's going to terrify people, which of course it does. But at the same time, because people have gotten to that breaking point, it does not stop them.

And at other moments, understandably, people get stopped by that level of, like, violence and repression. The other miscalculation the city makes with those indictments is that's actually when the national media starts paying attention.

So we had the black media paying attention, and now we have the New York Times, the AP sends its first reporters down to Montgomery. So now we have a national story.

So now people around the country, in particular black people around the country, are hearing about what's happening in Montgomery.

So in some ways, if the Montgomery city had done what other cities had done, which was just like, after a few weeks, just be like, okay, we'll give you first come, first serve, this wouldn't have become what it becomes. But because they go hard on it. And Montgomery's black community is like, no, we're sticking with this.

And then the third thing that happens is the learning. And I mentioned Viola White for a reason, which is one of the things that people like Nixon and Parks had learned.

And therefore Fred Gray learns is that one of the dangers is that the state might just tie up and never hear her appeal. And so it just like her case goes nowhere.

And so Fred Gray decides to file a proactive case into federal court challenging Montgomery's bus segregation. So Parks case is in state court, and he files a proactive case into federal court. And that federal case has four women on it.

Claudette Colvin, another black teenager by the name of Mary Louise Smith, Aurelia Browder, who is the title of the case. So the case is called Browder v. Gale. And then Susie McCormick. Parks is not on that case for a couple of reasons.

One, for procedural reasons, Gray doesn't want that case tossed out because it conflicts with the state court case. But two, Rosa Parks has long history with the naacp. We want to remember that the NAACP is being red baited in this period.

It will be outlawed in Alabama by June of 56. Rosa Parks long political history is potentially a liability. Another interesting fact about that case. Gray wants a minister on that case.

And no minister steps forward. It's four women, two of whom are teenagers. And that is the case that goes to the Supreme Court.

And that is what leads to the desegregation of Montgomery's buses. That federal case.

There's a whole lot of things that both pieces that come together, but also learning that goes into the shape of the Montgomery bus boycott that make it the example for people at the time that it did. Now, I want to just say kind of pivot to the point Nick was making, which is the kind of, you know, the Montgomery Bus Boycott now in popular memory.

And there I think it does something a little more troubling. I think the way we tend to remember the Montgomery Bus boycott is very flattened, is not about the work, it's not about the organizing.

It's just about this idea that you make a stand against injustice and then people rise up. And then in a democracy like the United States, injustice is corrected.

And so I think part of the seduction of Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott is that kind of happy ending American democracy kind of story. And I think so. I think in some ways, part of why even elementary school children in the UK learn about Rosa Parks is the tidiness of that story.

But again, we've been complicating that today.

Liam Heffernan: 00:34:58

As you said about the Montgomery bus buckle kind of being flattened throughout history, you could almost say the same about figures like Rosa Parks. You know, I think that the actual.

The danger that she put herself in, the work that she did, it wasn't just about her sitting on a bus and refusing to move. You know, she dedicated her whole life to the activism within which there were moments like this. Right.

Dr. Nicholas Grant: 00:35:25

I think Jean's point about how kind of the Montgomery bus boycott is a neat way into this is really. And that's why it gets remembered, I think, is really important to.

That's how it's misremembered, is really important to bear in mind and to keep thinking about kind of jumping ahead a little bit of.

Kind of, kind of the stuff that I was going to say a little bit in terms of how she is remembered, but I'll bring it in now, is at Trump's inauguration. Right. The.

The new leader of the House, Republican leader of the House, whose name completely escapes me for some reason, kind of references Donald Trump as kind of akin to Rosa Parks, for example. Right. Because here's someone, I think they say, like, America is the place where you can do the impossible, and Parks did the impossible. And Musk is.

Elon Musk is mentioned in the same breath as Rosa Parks as well. Right.

Which is just to evoke Parkes alongside those people in that way is just ridiculous and doesn't do any justice or is in any way relevant to the history that we've been discussing as well. Right. It's a mass distortion of what she represented, and it's used for very nefarious means.

So I think the point that that can happen and doesn't just happen, you know, once or twice happens repeatedly in terms of how she is remembered and the movement isn't remembered.

And like, what happened to her and like the risks that she took and the courage that that required is testament to that kind of relationship of, like, how the, how the past directly affects the present and when we need to be.

When we're thinking about social justice and movements for change, we need to kind of rewrite those histories that we have those tools to think about how you kind of challenge white nationalism, white supremacy, Trumpism in the present moment. So the fact that someone like Trump or people aligned to him can repeatedly use Parks as someone who they're kind of okay with. Right. Happy with.

I think Trump in: 2017

And I know Jean has written a lot of kind of op EDS and things about that as well, but I think that's the danger. Right?

And hopefully what we're doing in this podcast and what Jean has done in her work is massively kind of complicate that, because then we have a completely different picture of how society works and how change might occur as well, if there's injustices that we're seeing today that we think we want to challenge.

Liam Heffernan: 00:37:48

And I guess, you know, following on from that, you know, Jean, I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about, you know, Rosa Parks post Montgomery bus boycott. You know, how did her work continue and her involvement in the black power movement, for example?

Dr. Jeanne Theoharis: 00:38:03

So, as I mentioned, she loses her job. Raymond loses his job. Even after the success, successful end of the boycott, they can't find work in Montgomery.

They're still getting credible death threats. And so about eight months after the end of the boycott, the Parks family leaves Montgomery for Detroit, where her brother and cousins are.

And so she will spend. They will spend the second half of her life in what she describes as the northern promised land that wasn't.

But as she describes it, some of the public signs of segregation are thankfully gone, like on buses. But the systems of housing, segregation, of school, segregation, of police brutality, she finds much the same between Detroit and Montgomery.

And so she will spend the second half of her life fighting the racism of the Jim Crow north in and alongside what will become a growing black power movement in Detroit. And I think one point I think we want to make sure to kind of see is because I think.

I think part of the myth of Rosa Parks is this kind of, like, happy ending. She's the best lady, but I think the second myth about her is that she's quiet and passive, and Mrs.

Parks is definitely shy, but she also is made of steel, as her friends would say. And so she gets to Detroit in the kind of beginnings of the black power movement, and from.

And it's just all over that movement, working on issues around police brutality. She's an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam. She always has a global critique. They lived in public housing in Montgomery.

in reparations. She's at the: 1972

When I was talking to people involved in Detroit's black power movement, they would just be like, she was everywhere. And I think this complicates both our idea about Rosa Parks. But also our idea about who were black power activists. Right.

Because I think we tend to imagine that as like, young people or young men with fists or guns. And miss that there was a wide array of people who took part in a whole bevy of different groups. And then I'll tell one story about Malcolm X.

ks meet for the first time in: 1963

He's come to Detroit to address the Grassroots Leadership Conference. What we know is message to the grassroots. He puts out word that he wants to meet her. He admires her tremendously.

When I was doing interviews for the book, I interviewed Peter Bailey, who was one of Malcolm X's lieutenants in the Organization of Afro American unity. And Mr. Bailey said that Malcolm talked about two women in the civil rights movement with awe. And that's Rosa Parks and Fannie Louhimer.

I think we also forget that Malcolm X also needs and looking for courage and inspiration. So they meet for the first time in 63. They meet for the last time about a week before he's assassinated. She gets him to sign her program.

She's being honored that night. He's giving the keynote. So there's kind of a sweet fan moment there.

But seeing that kind of relationship and love between Rosa Parks and Malcolm, I think is sort of crucial to kind of understanding kind of how capacious her politics were.

Dr. Nicholas Grant: 00:41:49

Can I just jump in?

Because one of the things I wanted to talk about, which, again, Jean covers, but as someone who's interested in the anti apartheid movement and the global politics of anti apartheid historically in relation to apartheid South Africa. And Jean was saying she always has this global critique. And we talked.

I mean, it might be a little bit of a push to say, but we talked about how she's influenced by that kind of double victory campaign and about thinking about fascism in Europe and how that relates to, second, segregation at home. She's a key proponent or key figure or is actively involved in the anti apartheid movement into the 70s and 80s.

And some of that comes out of her connections with black power activists who also have this global analysis of race and capitalist oppression often and how they kind of intersect and see the apartheid regime in South Africa as mirroring and reflecting racial practices and racial discrimination at home, partly because of America's involvement with the South African regime and kind of see those struggles as being fundamentally interconnected. And Parks is part of that, and she's making those contributions as well.

And she has that global analysis of racism and the need to challenge white supremacy wherever it may be found across borders. And again, this appears in Jean's book. So I feel really silly kind of recounting it when she could do it much better. But there's as.

When Nelson Mandela is released from prison and goes on kind of these. These tours and goes to Detroit, she's part of the welcoming party.

And there's a kind of moment of excitement where Mandela recognizes her, runs over, embraces her.

l figure, particularly in the: 1950

He kind of wrote about US imperialism in Africa.

He took up the armed struggle in southern Africa, had links with the Soviet Union in terms of providing arms and support, had a militant critique of global capitalism. And that's often not the Mandela that we kind of remember publicly today or who is invoked by politicians of certain political persuasions.

t moment of them embracing in: 1990

And obviously, Jean's book does so much work kind of challenging that and the work of other scholars as well. And the same has been done for Mandela.

But there's still work to do, I think, in terms of explaining that to a broader public audience and kind of getting people to interact with these alternatives, alternative histories as well.

Liam Heffernan: 00:44:35

Yeah. I mean, on that note, Nick, I wonder how you think Rosa Parks legacy will be or. And is being remembered not just domestically in the U.S.

but also, you know, here in the U.K. and in South Africa and around the world.

Dr. Nicholas Grant: 00:44:51

Yeah, Well, I mentioned the kind of misuse of Parks by leader of the House recently in Trump's inauguration.

I think, from teaching about the black freedom struggle from a UK perspective, with predominantly UK students who've come through the educational system in this country. I mean, I do do this every year. I probably should change it up a little bit.

But I say, like, who do you know the most about in terms of the civil rights movement? The American civil rights movement, and it's always Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and they are the three figures.

And I'm probably doing a disservice to a whole bunch of, like, secondary school educators who do kind of teach this history really well, but they're the figures that kind of appear in people's kind of knowledge and grounding. Right. And it's a very kind of narrow image of who those people were. King and X are taught in tension with one another.

Rosa Parks is like the brave lady who's just too tired to give up her seat. All of that kind of stuff, that context, all of that stuff that we've been talking about today is omitted.

The government in this country kind of recommends that, in terms of talking about race, that Rosa Parks is one of the figures that they focus on. So at Key Stage 1, at primary school level, Rosa Parks even comes up in the classroom.

I was trying to find some examples of that from websites on schools and presentations. And what I could glean is that.

And it's understandable in a way, because these are very young children, but it's very much that narrative of the bus and the seat and kind of not much else in terms of context. Right.

So I think there's a kind of big problem there in terms of how British students see the struggle for civil rights in the United States and how they misremember it. And there's still a lot of work to be done on that.

ed the Bristol bus boycott in: 1963

But I think there's still a lot more to be done in the UK to put Parkes as part of these broader conversations, as part of these broader networks, and to make these comparisons as well, so that students in the UK aren't just learning a very narrow story about who Rosa Parks was, but thinking critically about the histories of race within their own country, as well as learning about a kind of more interesting and complicated and courageous and brave parks and than is often taught at school, in schools in this country.

Liam Heffernan: 00:47:24

And, you know, we've covered a lot of ground in this, in this podcast and given people a lot of food for thought here.

But, Jean, to sort of start to wrap this up, I wonder if people wanted to find out more about Rosa Parks besides reading your own book, of course, where would you kind of recommend, you know, people look or. Or research to sort of get a true sense of really what happened?

Dr. Jeanne Theoharis: 00:47:51

So, one thing we haven't mentioned, which is that I adapted my book with Brandy Colbert for young adults. And so there is a rebellious life of Mrs. Rosa Parks for young people.

So if we're talking about middle school, high school students, that's what we made this book for them. Because I was hearing many people were hearing, I don't want to just have to get to college to learn the real history.

Then along with that, we created a curriculum. There's actually a documentary that was made based on my book.

I'm not sure if you can screen it there because it's through Peacock and I'm not sure, but it's called the rebellious life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. But because of that, we created a whole curriculum and it's a Zen education project.

If you go to ZinEducation project on the web and then you look at their teaching campaigns and one is Teaching Rosa Parks. And there's many, many lessons with primary sources, with ideas for teachers.

So I think in terms of some of the things that Nick is saying about how she provides a vehicle to teach the black freedom struggle differently, to teach critical thinking and why we get the stories we get, there's a whole set of lessons there. Again, at Zinn Z I N n named for Howardson Education Project.

I also love for Young people, Claudette Colvin's book with Philip Huss called Twice Toward justice in terms of Colvin's story.

But yeah, I think Parks offers both a way to sort of talk about the black freedom struggle kind of from the 30s to the 90s, the expansiveness, and also offers a way to think critically about the history we get and the kind of myths and fables and how to kind of teach students or get us to kind of think more critically about those national fables.

Liam Heffernan: 00:49:41

It's been fascinating listening to both of you and really sort of painting that big picture as well as finding out more about how Rosa Parks specifically sort of fit within that. So thank you both for exploring that with me on this episode.

We're going to wrap up the main episode here, but for anyone that does want to find out a little bit more, we're going to throw out a bonus episode which will be available a few days after on the feed. Or if you do support the show for a tiny, tiny amount, you can get it right away.

But thanks so much to both yourself, Nick, and also to Genethia Harris for joining me on this episode. Everything we've discussed will be in the show notes, so do check out the links there to to read more and also to buy Jean's book. Please do that.

And if anyone wants to connect with both of you directly. Where can they?

Dr. Jeanne Theoharis: 00:50:33

Jean I teach at Brooklyn College, so if you put my name in, you can see my. You can get my Brooklyn College email or on Twitter aetheoharris.

Liam Heffernan: 00:50:42

Wonderful.

Dr. Nicholas Grant: 00:50:42

And Nick, I have retreated from social media. I think I still have an account I have not been on for a while. So yeah, just email me.

And I think I teach at the University of East Anglia in the UK and also I think like in terms of that last point about people thinking about how you teach, that there are lots of people in in the UK who will happily come to schools and talk to teachers as well, working at universities who teach the US Civil rights movement. There's a weird amount of us. There's quite a lot more than you'd expect.

So please do reach out and I know a lot of people up and down the country would be are talking to teachers and would be happy to do more of that work as well.

Liam Heffernan: 00:51:17

Well, yeah, that's a good point Nick, thanks for that.

And of course you know you can always email myself and the show hello podcast by Liam.com if you did want helping sort of connecting with people to sort of take this further. Always happy to help. We like a matchmaking service for academia on the show.

But if you do enjoy the podcast, also leave us a rating and a review wherever you're listening to this because that helps us out and a lot of people put a lot of work into this. So it makes us very happy to to see what you think of that and follow the show as well so that all future episodes appear in your feed.

Thank you so much for listening and goodbye.