Rosa Parks biographer to speak June 11 at Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

[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.

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."

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]