Rosa Parks: A Biography

This book offers a revealing look at Rosa Parks, whose role as an activist and struggle with racism began long before her historic 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, bus ride.

Rosa Parks: A Biography captures the story of this remarkable woman like no other biography of her before it. It examines the entire scope of Rosa Parks's life, from her birth in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama to her 1943 enrollment in the Montgomery NAACP to the dramatic events of the 1960s, and her continuing work up to her death in 2005.

Each chapter provides an exploration of a period in Parks's life, portraying the people, places, and events that shaped and were shaped by her. Readers will see in Parks, not an inadvertent tripwire of history, but a woman whose lifelong struggle against racism led her inexorably to a moment where she took a courageous stand by sitting down and not moving.


About the Author
Joyce A. Hanson is professor of history at California State University, San Bernardino in San Bernardino, CA.