tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post3454131985404493258..comments2024-03-19T09:21:34.428-04:00Comments on the daily howler: ROSA PARKS AT 100: Who in the world was Rosa Parks!<b>bob somerby</b>http://www.blogger.com/profile/02963464534685954436noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-55517500564375628692013-02-07T17:47:37.868-05:002013-02-07T17:47:37.868-05:00Dang, Urban, they should hire you as an editor at ...Dang, Urban, they should hire you as an editor at Beacon Press. You're finding better support for the author's argument than she does herself. The fact remains, however, that Somerby has done a pretty good job here of documenting Theoharis's cherry picking of sources. (Caught her red handed, if you'll pardon the pun.) If you go on Amazon they trying to shill the book as follows:<br /><br />"The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks examines her six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement."<br /><br />If Theohardis is truly claiming the status for her book as a major revision, without crediting the massive body of literature that laid the ground work for her efforts, that that is a pretty serious scholarly faux pas.cacambonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8611810694571930415.post-69820456505048539702013-02-07T14:56:51.742-05:002013-02-07T14:56:51.742-05:00This is now about 3500 words devoted to ridiculing...This is now about 3500 words devoted to ridiculing an author and a columnist because they were not as precise as they could have been in describing the state of national understanding of Rosa Parks and the incident. <br /><br />Whatever myths there were about her, they were built up over the course of 50 years before her death. TDH can Nexis or Google his way to ten thousand articles around the time of her death that were more accurate about her activism, and it would do absolutely nothing to disprove the existence of a myth of a singular act of courage by an ordinary and unimportant person on her way home from work. <br /><br />Here is the back cover of perhaps the most prominent biography about Parks, written in 2000 by Douglas Brinkley, one of the most prolific biographers of our time: "Rosa Parks, an African-American seamstress in 1955 Alabama, had no idea she was changing history when, work-weary, she refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus. Now she is immortalized for the defiance that sent her to jail. . . . Here in Rosa Parks are the quiet dignity, hope, courage and humor that have made this twentieth century everywoman a living legend.. . .”<br /><br />Is that evidence of a myth about Rosa Parks or what? Let's see: "seamstress," "no idea she was changing history," "work-weary," "everywoman." Where are the words "lifelong activist"? Geez, Rosa Parks herself in interviews expressly acknowledged the existence of the myth. So what, then, is the point of these 3500 words? Given a commonly-noted premise that the weaker the argument the more words are needed to make it, isn't the answer that there isn't much point except fulfilling a need to attack people TDH doesn't like? urban legendnoreply@blogger.com