She Would Not Be Moved:
Remembering Rosa Parks
A review of Herbert Kohl’s She Would Not Be Moved:
How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
The New Press, 2005
thenewpress.com
When Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005, many a newscast devoted a segment to her significant moment in history when, fifty years ago, she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus. Colin Powell wisely cited what was missing from ABC’s voice-overed summary of the past: that the African-American community of 1950s Alabama had been long preparing resistance against the segregation laws of the South, but what they needed was a spark to mass-action. Rosa Parks became that spark, a woman who devoted much of her life to the struggle for racial equality. Or, as she clarified in 1992, the history books too often assert “that my feet were hurting and I didn’t know why I refused to stand up when they told me,” but Parks was fully aware of the implications – and the risk – of her action. It is profoundly unfair that she remains, in many respects, a footnote in the story of US activism.
Herbert Kohl’s She Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott was originally intended as an educator’s guide on how to incorporate Parks into a holistic, meaningful curriculum. With her death, the book becomes a tribute to a remarkable life, one that sets the records (and the news segments) straight.
Kohl first corrects the widely-circulated inaccuracies in textbooks and children’s literature, which present Parks’ story as little more than an inspirational parable. Consistently evoking Parks as a “poor, tired seamstress,” and her legendary stance as an isolated incident, these versions ignore her role as a community leader who actively protested (her civil disobedience on December 1, 1955 became groundbreaking because it was the first time the bus driver, instead of removing her from the bus, had her arrested). Nor do the myth-perpetuating narratives explore the political workings of the larger, well-mobilized African-American organizations of the South, or the frightening consequences Parks was forced to face as a result of her stand (she and her husband lost their jobs and received death threats from local racists).
In an honest and rousing language, Kohl provides a revised telling of the events of 1955, alongside comprehensive resources for teachers (such as a notable book list including writers like Eloise Greenfield and David A. Adler who grippingly contextualize Parks’ demonstration). In the final section, the author suggests linking a biography of Rosa Parks to classroom units on anti-racism and the global human rights movement. Importantly, he also alludes to a lesson plan that would focus on the faulty, fragmented texts to examine with students why those books are faulty in the first place. For the non-educators in Kohl’s audience, the analysis emerges as a sharp-eyed glimpse into the story of historical revision itself, and a moving meditation on the legacy of the woman deservedly called a matriarch of civil rights.
–Michelle Humphrey