Rosa Parks

Read by Karen White
Audiobook Download
On sale Jun 02, 2000 | 7 Hours and 22 Minutes | 978-1-4159-1069-6
In 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress, had no idea she was changing history when, fed up and tired, she refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a bus in segregated Alabama. Today, she is immortalized for the defiance that sent her to jail and triggered a bus boycott that catapulted Martin Luther King Jr. into the national spotlight. Who was she, before and after her historic act, and how did that act sound the death knell for Jim Crow? Historian Douglas Brinkley brings mid-twentieth-century America alive in this brilliant examination of a celebrated heroine in the context of her life and tumultuous times. Here is the quiet dignity, hope, courage, and humor that have made this every-woman a living legend.
Prologue

Chapter 1: Up from the Pine

Chapter 2: Coming of Age in Montgomery

Chapter 3: A Stirring Passion for Equality

Chapter 4: Laying a Foundations

Chapter 5: The Preparation

Chapter 6: The Bus Boycott

Chapter 7: Strength through Serenity

Chapter 8: "We Make the Road by Walking It"

Chapter 9: Steadfast and Unmovable

Chapter 10: Detroit Days

Chapter 11: Months of Bloody Sundays

Chapter 12: Onward

Epilogue

Bibliographical Notes

Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University, the CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Audubon. The Chicago Tribune has dubbed him “America’s new past master.” His recent Cronkite won the Sperber Prize for Best Book in Journalism and was a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year. The Great Deluge won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and three children. View titles by Douglas Brinkley

About

In 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress, had no idea she was changing history when, fed up and tired, she refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a bus in segregated Alabama. Today, she is immortalized for the defiance that sent her to jail and triggered a bus boycott that catapulted Martin Luther King Jr. into the national spotlight. Who was she, before and after her historic act, and how did that act sound the death knell for Jim Crow? Historian Douglas Brinkley brings mid-twentieth-century America alive in this brilliant examination of a celebrated heroine in the context of her life and tumultuous times. Here is the quiet dignity, hope, courage, and humor that have made this every-woman a living legend.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1: Up from the Pine

Chapter 2: Coming of Age in Montgomery

Chapter 3: A Stirring Passion for Equality

Chapter 4: Laying a Foundations

Chapter 5: The Preparation

Chapter 6: The Bus Boycott

Chapter 7: Strength through Serenity

Chapter 8: "We Make the Road by Walking It"

Chapter 9: Steadfast and Unmovable

Chapter 10: Detroit Days

Chapter 11: Months of Bloody Sundays

Chapter 12: Onward

Epilogue

Bibliographical Notes

Author

Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history at Rice University, the CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Audubon. The Chicago Tribune has dubbed him “America’s new past master.” His recent Cronkite won the Sperber Prize for Best Book in Journalism and was a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year. The Great Deluge won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He is a member of the Society of American Historians and the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and three children. View titles by Douglas Brinkley