The day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white man, she altered history forever. Nobody would argue that her actions were not a significant and influential aspect of the Civil Rights movement. Yet, society unknowingly does not give her the credit she deserves. Often referred to as the “Mother of the Civil Rights movement,” Parks’s accomplishments are severely diminished. Rosa Parks is not simply a “mother,” nor is she just a pretty image for the movement, she was a leader. Throughout the novel The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis, she explores the aspects of Parks’s activism that she is never given credit for and the inherent sexist nature that led to her accomplishments to be ignored.
When people learn about Rosa Parks and her part in the Montgomery bus boycott, they are often taught that she was a quiet, humble, and soft-spoken women who performed a singular act of resistance.…show more content… In The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks, Theoharis states: “One day, when she was coming home from school with her cousins who went to public school, a white boy on roller skates tried to push her off the sidewalk. Rosa turned around and pushed him back. The boy’s mother threatened her with jail. ‘So [Rosa] told her that he had pushed [her] and that [she] didn’t want to be pushed, seeing that [she] wasn’t bother him at all” (9).
Rosa later noticed that standing up for herself made the woman and her son to stop bothering her. This reassured Parks that what she was doing was making a difference, and had to continue to be done. Furthermore, this act of defiance contradicts the stereotypical characterization of Parks’s actions. She was not timid, shy, and never angry; conversely, she was independent, brave, and defiant, especially regarding matters of civil
