The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2013

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapter 7-Conclusion

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary: “‘I Had Been Pushed as Far as I Could Stand to Be Pushed’: Rosa Parks’s Bus Stand”

Whenever she could, Parks avoided riding the bus. City laws gave bus drivers the same powers as law enforcement, and Black riders experienced open discrimination and violence in the Montgomery transportation system. Every bus driver enforced the rules differently. Some required Black passengers to enter from the back of the bus after paying their fares in the front. Some forced Black riders to stand while seats remained empty.

After her historical act of resistance, Parks made a point of noting the number of other Black resisters who came before her. Numerous stories of Black passengers who refused to succumb to the arbitrary and discriminatory practices on buses preceded her. In many of these cases, these Black passengers were treated violently and even arrested. However, judicial systems were careful not to charge them in a way that would violate federal segregation laws. While Parks worked as secretary for the NAACP, she carefully took the details of each of these cases. She took note of the price of each individual activist’s bravery and resistance. Several of them paid with their lives. She also witnessed her own mother challenging a bus driver who told her to move after she sat down next to a white passenger.

On March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin, the 15-year-old with whom Parks worked on the Youth Council, boarded a bus to return home after school. When the white section of the bus filled up, a white woman refused to sit in one of the seats across the aisle from Colvin and her three friends. The bus driver yelled at the students to move. Colvin’s three friends moved toward the back, but Colvin remained in her seat. Two police officers removed her from the bus and arrested her. Because of Parks’s tutelage, Colvin was careful not to fight back. Her case received much attention, including that of a young reverend named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Law enforcement charged the slight-framed young woman with assault on three officers. Many believed that Colvin was the right person to serve as a catalyst for change in the segregated transportation system, but Nixon was adamant that she was not the right face of the movement. Many historical accounts cite Colvin’s pregnancy as the reason for pulling her from the limelight, but Colvin did not become pregnant until after Nixon determined she was not the right person for the job.

On December 1, 1955—nine months after Colvin’s arrest—Parks was extremely frustrated. She was angry at the outcome of Colvin’s case and the never-ending roadblocks she encountered. On her way home from work, she was looking forward to relaxing with Raymond and thinking about the irony of Christmas decorations’ claiming “Peace on Earth” (61). On this occasion, Parks’s journey was too long for her to walk, so she was forced to take a bus with a driver who previously discriminated against her. Contrary to a commonly repeated version of the event, Parks did not sit in the front of the bus. Instead, she sat in the middle of the bus, behind the white section. The bus quickly filled up, and a white male passenger was left standing behind the driver’s seat. When the driver noticed this, he commanded Parks and the other Black passengers in her row to move, meaning they would be forced to stand so a single white passenger could take one of their seats. Parks did not plan to become the face of the movement that day; it was not a collaborated effort of the NAACP. Instead, she was merely tired of the constant barrage of violence and mistreatment of Black citizens in Montgomery, and she refused to move.

The driver called his supervisor, who commanded that he force Parks to move from her seat. He then notified the police, who boarded the bus and escorted her away. She overheard the officers ask the driver if he was sure that he wanted to press charges and believed she even heard one of them whisper, “NAACP” (66). This decision catalyzed notable change in the civil rights movement.

Chapter 4 Summary: “‘There Lived a Great People’: The Montgomery Bus Boycott”

When Nixon learned of Parks’s arrest and that she was uninjured, he was delighted. He believed that they finally found their symbol. Parks was perfect: She appealed to both the working and the middle class. She was known for her temperament and faith, a true “lady” (73). When Black Montgomery residents learned of her arrest, they were able to empathize. Parks was on her way to becoming an important and central symbolic figure of the civil rights movement. In interviews throughout her life, she stressed that her decision on December 1 was predicated by a long history of brave individuals’ taking a stand. She felt the press was ignoring the arduous work of activists for the many years prior to 1955.

Once in jail, she asked the officers for water, but she was denied and told that water was for white prisoners only. She was calm about the whole affair and annoyed that the arrest was keeping her from her NAACP work. Nixon took a white couple who worked to support the cause to the jail to post bail for her. The charges could have been dropped, since she did not violate city law, but Nixon wanted to make it a public case. Raymond was hesitant to pursue it. Although he was an activist at heart, he knew what this could do to his wife and his mother-in-law. He worried that white supremacists might attempt to hurt her. However, convinced by his wife and Nixon, he agreed to the plan.

The story of Parks’s arrest galvanized the Black community in Montgomery. Angered that the city did nothing after Colvin’s arrest, those who were complacent finally started to perk up. A women’s group called for a boycott of the city’s bus system. They passed out more than 35,000 leaflets, encouraging everyone to boycott buses on the day of her trial. Nixon enlisted the help of the new and unknown pastor Martin Luther King, Jr. to help advocate for the boycott. King was trepidatious. He knew that publicly fighting for such a cause would come at a cost for himself and his family. Because another pastor agreed to help, he decided to do so as well.

Parks knew nothing of the boycott, even though her own lawyer and friend Fred Gray encouraged it. Parks continued to work for the NAACP, even fielding phone calls about her own arrest, never revealing to the callers to whom they were speaking. To counter a rumor that she was an NAACP plant, the tale of the “simple tired seamstress” that continues to persist circulated (84). Parks was astounded on the day of her trial to find the city buses empty of Black passengers. The boycott was an incredible success. The prosecutor for her case changed the warrant to suggest that Parks violated state, rather than city, law. She was found guilty. Nixon encouraged the crowd outside the courthouse to stay peaceful and not give law enforcement any reason whatsoever to react violently.

That evening, 15,000 people attended a meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church and heard Nixon and King speak. Parks sat on stage but was not asked to speak. Instead, she was told she already “said enough” (93). The boycott continued. The MIA, led by King, organized a carpool system. The organization made a few meager requests of the mayor and city commissioners, including a first-come, first-served basis for bus seating. The requests were denied. Local newspapers threatened boycotters. King’s and Nixon’s homes were bombed, and Parks’s family received a plethora of threatening phone calls. Raymond and Rosa both lost their jobs as the boycott persisted through Christmas. Despite these costs, strides were made. The bus company was affected by the boycott, rumors of its closure circulated, and the boycott began to receive national attention in the press.

Park’s appeal on her own case was denied, and she appealed to the state Supreme Court. When the city used a 1903 law to prosecute anyone who started a boycott, 200 Black Montgomery residents were called in to testify. Parks and King were among the first to turn themselves in. Gray and a team of attorneys pursued separate trials for each person. The Black community was outraged at this move from the city.

Chapters 3-4 Analysis

Theoharis places Parks’s bus stand in Chapter 3, centering the fact that her activist work continued for a lifetime after 1955. The author continually rejects the false narrative of Parks’s action, emphasizing its place within a history of rebellious acts. Parks was not the first person to remain in her seat when ordered to move. Many, many others were arrested for making the same choice. Parks even worked with and supported Colvin, who would have become the face of the movement if Nixon had not decided she was the wrong fit for the role. The theme of “The Narrative of Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement” reveals her symbolization and Nixon’s purposeful selection of her to represent the movement. Yet placing her in that position silenced the lineage of activism that informed Parks’s decision.

However, Nixon’s decision was not entirely ungrounded. The community rallied around Parks in astonishing numbers. As a symbol, she was demure, kind, respectable, and unassuming. She was presented as meek and, therefore, as victimized. It was clear why this type of symbol might direct focus to an unjust system of discrimination. However, the reality of Parks was that she was strong, a fighter. She participated in political activism for a decade prior to December 1. She was the young girl who pushed back and the woman who did so in a different way. Theoharis reveals that Parks understood her role as a symbol and what this constructed image of her did to empower the movement. However, she also understood that the symbolization of herself and the entire movement allowed certain systems of oppression to continue to thrive.

This becomes one of the greatest prices she pays for her activism. The theme of “The Cost of Activism” explores how the reality of fighting for the cause was starkly different from the experiences painted by the fable of the civil rights movement. Activists paid dearly for challenging the status quo. Parks’s greatest sacrifice was herself. Being reduced to a symbol meant the complexities of her experience and her advocacy work were largely ignored, since they did not align with the false narrative that came to dominate her life. Although she mobilized the nation, she had to sit on the sidelines as other male activists took center stage. She spent her lifetime oppressed by white supremacy and racist structures, only to be turned into a silent symbol by those she worked with.

One interesting perspective of Parks’s life is how gender played a role in both her activism and her role as a symbol. Even though her work was imperative for Nixon’s career and the success of the movement, his view of her was highly gendered: He saw her as a secretary and little more. He failed to recognize that turning Parks into a symbol was a betrayal of her character and her work. Gender politics played into the type of symbol that she became. She was palatable to the public and the media because she could be presented as a dignified and demure middle-class woman. Thus, she fit into an archetype that was punctuated by femininity and propagated by the movement and the press. However, the reality of her activism was measured by strength, courage, and rationalism; she was smart, exacting, and full of fire.

Theoharis emphasizes all the dualities and ironies of Parks and the civil rights movement itself. She recognizes ways in which the symbolization of Rosa Parks was seen as necessary and was powerful for the movement, while simultaneously drawing attention to the fact that this framing allowed injustice to be overlooked and Parks’s own sacrifices to be ignored. Theoharis also exposes the ways in which Parks as a symbol did not align with the strong woman who chose activism every morning.