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Rosa Parks biographer to speak June 11 at Lincoln Presidential
Library and Museum
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[May 18, 2013]
SPRINGFIELD -- When Rosa Parks
refused to move to the back of an Alabama bus, she wasn't simply a
seamstress tired from a long day of work and fed up with
discrimination. She was also a determined activist who fully
understood the consequences of her actions, as author Jeanne
Theoharis will explain June 11 at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential
Library and Museum.
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 Theoharis, author of "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks," will
sign copies of her book at 6 p.m. and speak at the museum's Union
Theater at 6:30.The event is free but requires reservations.
Visit
www.presidentlincoln.illinois.gov and click on "Special
event tickets," or click
here.
The museum's store and exhibits at 212 N. Sixth St. in
Springfield will be open during the event.
This year is the 100th anniversary of Parks' birth. She was
honored in February with a statue in the U.S. Capitol, the first
African-American woman to achieve that distinction. When she died in
2005, she became the first woman to lie in state in the Capitol
Rotunda.
Writing for The New York Times, prominent historian Nell Irvin
Painter said Theoharis' book reveals "a working-class activist who
looked poverty and discrimination squarely in the face and never
stopped rebelling against them."
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 The book explains that Parks knew other protesters of segregated
bus service had been manhandled or killed and that the same could
happen to her. It also details her activism with the NAACP, the
Voters' League and a leadership seminar where she studied approaches
to desegregation.
Theoharis says her book is meant to look behind "the
inspirational fable" of Rosa Parks' life to examine her decades of
activism, leadership and sacrifice.
Theoharis is professor of political science at Brooklyn College
of the City University of New York. She is the author or co-author
of six books and numerous articles on the black freedom struggle and
the contemporary politics of race in the United States.
[Text from file received from the
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency] |
