Fadedgiant.net

At Fadedgiant Books

Rosa Parks: My Story by Rosa Parks, James Haskins, Jim Haskins (Contributor)
From Kirkus Reviews - Even those familiar with her name will realize on reading this engrossing account how little they really know of Parks's life and the events that surrounded the dawning Civil Rights movement. Setting her historic refusal to give up her seat on a bus in the context of a life that began in 1913 in rural Alabama dramatizes the fact that her action came at a time and place that gave it the force to challenge the rigors of a lopsided system of justice. Few will be unmoved by the tactics employed by whites to disrupt the subsequent boycott; at the center, always, is Parks's dignified, calm recounting of outrages against her and other women and men, giving her words weight and impact as no raw fury could. Like sitting at the knee of an elder with much to tell, reading her story leads to ever more questions (``What was it really like then?'') and shock that such injustices not only existed in the recent past but still linger. B&w photos, chronology, & index not seen. (Autobiography. 10+) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Quiet Strength by Rosa Parks, Gregory J. Reed (Contributor)
From Booklist - Parks, one of the U.S.' authentic living legends, is the black lady who on December 1, 1955, refused to surrender her bus seat to a white man, was arrested under the Jim Crow law that required blacks to make way for whites, and thereby launched the yearlong bus boycott by blacks in Birmingham, Alabama, which led to the national overturning of that city's and similar segregation laws across the nation. In this tiny collection of what seem like outtakes from oral-history tapes, she rehearses her great day (as it seems from the perspective of history; Parks remembers it as "not a happy experience. . . . I had not planned to be arrested"), stressing that it wasn't, as many have romanticized, because her feet were tired that she didn't move, but because she was "tired of being oppressed . .ÿ20. just plain tired." Her remarks, disposed somewhat arbitrarily into sections topically named "Fear," "Pain," "Character," "Faith," "Values," reflect her lifelong commitment to justice for black Americans and to peace and equal opportunity for all. Further, she leaves no doubt that her persistence in these causes springs from her deep Christian faith and the obligation she feels to make a better world for future generations. Perhaps the sentiments are not all that special, but their speaker certainly is special. Ray Olson