"A Lipper/Viking book."

Includes bibliographical references.

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. Today, she is immortalized for the defiance that sent her to jail & triggered a bus boycott that catapulted Martin Luther King, Jr., into the national spotlight. Who was she, before & after her historic act, & how did that act sound the death knell for Jim Crow? Historian Douglas Brinkley, whose "vigorous language" & "marvelous portraits" (Stephen Ambrose) have made him an acclaimed author & a media favorite, brings mid-century America alive in this brilliant examination of a celebrated heroine in the context of her life & tumultuous times. Here in Rosa Parks are the quiet dignity, hope, courage, & humor which have made this twentieth-century everywoman a living legend--an eye-opener of a book for students of history, politics, the black experience, & human nature.

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