The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (61 page)

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

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

7
. Parks,
Dear Mrs. Parks
, 36.

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

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

10
. Parks,
Dear Mrs. Parks
, 52–55.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

28
. Brown, “Mother of the Movement.”

29
. Ibid.

30
. Rosa Parks, interview by
Newsforum
, SC.

31
. Ibid.

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

33
. Ibid.

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

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

36
. Materials, Folder 1-7, RPP.

37
. Shipp, “Rosa Parks, 92.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

51
. Ibid., 29.

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

53
. Norman, author interview.

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

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

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

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

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

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

60
. Parks,
Quiet Strength
, 87.

61
. Parks,
My Story
, 209.

62
. Cassandra Spratling, “Goodbye, Mrs. Parks,”
Detroit Free Press
, October 25, 2005.

63
. Portia Scott, “Civil Rights Catalyst Rosa Parks Visits the City,”
Atlanta Daily World
, February 22, 1985.

Rosa Parks outside the Highlander Folk School Library, circa 1955.

Parks, Septima Clark, and Parks’s mother pose during Parks’s visit to Highlander in December 1956 to meet with students desegregating schools in Clinton, Tennessee.

From left: Martin Luther King Jr., Pete Seeger, Myles Horton’s daughter Charis, Parks, and Ralph Abernathy gather for Highlander’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebration, 1957.

Septima Clark and Parks share a relaxing moment at Highlander, circa 1955.

Parks and her husband, Raymond, go to court for her arraignment on December 5, 1955, the first day of the Montgomery bus boycott.