The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

Parks’s ties to the Black Power movement and the need for self-defense in political activism find their roots in her childhood. She learned early that when she fought back, she was able to accomplish something. When the mother of a boy she pushed in self-defense threatened to press charges against her, Parks learned that by standing up to the mother, she was able to change the outcome of events. This taught her that it took more than just nonviolent protest to pursue a cause: Strength was also needed.

Parks understood that sometimes a little roughness was necessary. She appreciated that Malcolm X did not exhibit the complacency that she perceived in many of her peers and in the NAACP. He challenged the idea that Black Americans were content with what they were given. For her, this notion mirrored what she was told as a little girl, that to stay safe she must put on a face of satisfaction for white people and always smile. This was “The Legacy of Rebellion.” Parks’s grandfather distrusted white people and would not allow his grandchildren to play in white homes. He took a more militant view of challenging the racist structures that dictated their lives. Parks, however, believed in a balance of nonviolent protest and a show of force. She learned early in life that strength was a powerful tool that could be wielded against oppression and discrimination.

However, this belief contradicted the symbolized version of her—demure, meek, and prim. Once again, the narrative surrounding Parks and the civil rights movement denied the complex reality of the struggle. Her image erases Parks’s admiration of Malcolm X and close support of Black militant movements in favor of a nonthreatening view of her, allowing the public to position her activism as a single act that belongs to a completed struggle from a distant, racist past. Throughout her life, Parks was an enigma whose reality deviated from the glossy symbol she became.

Theoharis attempts to understand the role of the fable in the successes of the civil rights movement, as well as its role in its failures. The theme of “The Narrative of Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement” focuses on the use of her image as a means of distraction and sedation. For Parks, however, her symbolization also mobilized citizens to fight against racist powers and enabled others to flourish. The fables constructed about the civil rights movement and the symbol of Parks perpetuated the idea that racism was over and America was a postracial society in which everyone could and should be satisfied.

When she was a child, Parks learned from her mother and her grandmother how to act in front of white people: Black people must always give an appearance of contentment to avoid provoking white anger. The fable of the civil rights movement was a continuation of this sentiment; it projected the idea that there was no longer a need for activism. This myth was rooted in the idea that Black people could now be content, and there was no need to demand more. Just as she knew this was wrong as a child, Parks understood that there was still plenty more that needed to be demanded. There was always more work to be done.

The work of Malcolm X and Black militants spoke to a piece of Parks that the symbolized version did not characterize. She believed in seeking social justice “by any means necessary” because she had seen the cost of living in a world without it. Her time working for the NAACP, carefully recording the stories of those victimized by white people and by racist power structures, informed her understanding of the importance of the civil rights movement. She was willing to publicly sacrifice pieces of her identity and become a symbol because she knew that she could do something in that role that would contribute to the greater good. However, the public’s acceptance of the symbolic version of Parks allowed the world to overlook the immense power and drive she devoted to her lifelong activism.