Rosa Parks Revisited Summary

Many American’s know Rosa Parks for her courageous act of of civil disobedience with her refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a crowded bus. In Charles Blow’s New York Times article “Rosa Parks Revisited”, Blow talks about Rosa Parks journey to fame and her inspiring life. The article was written on February 2, 2013 which is close to what would have been her 100th birthday. The intended audience for this article seems to be everyone because Blow believes there are many misconceptions about Rosa Parks and this is shown with the opening sentence of the Article “Most of what you think you know about Rosa Parks may well be wrong” (Blow A23). I agree with Blow because for the longest time I believed that Rosa Parks was to tired after

work to get up but instead I learned that “she resisted not because she was physically tired, she recalled; rather she was “tired of giving in.” (Roark 734).
Although it seems like that Blow wants to inform the readers about the life of Rosa Parks and her contribution to the civil rights movement, in actuality the intentions for Blow might be to promote a book.

Blow says “On the Verge of the 100th anniversary of her birth this Monday come a fascinating new book, The Rebellious Life Of Mrs. Rosa Parks,” by Jeanne Theoharris,..”(Blow A23), and personally it sound’s to much like a promotion. Putting the promotion aside Blow talks about what type of person Parks was growing up and it supports her brave characteristics we all know of. At the time, the refusal Parks committed was against the law and it also got her arrested. This bravery seemed to start from when Parks was very young, “She sometimes sat with him because as the book says she put it, “I wanted to see him kill a Ku Kluxer” (Blow A23), this quote refers to Parks giving her grandfather company as he sat with a rifle on their porch to defend themselves from any Klan members . Another thing mentioned by Blow is how her grandmother described her as “too high strung” (Blow A23) and warned her “she will be lynched before the age of 20” (Blow A23) and Rosa Parks reply is what defines her personality and foreshadows what kind of person she would be in the future. Parks replies to her grandmother by saying “I would be lynched rather than be run over by them” (Blow A23) and she demonstrated this from her famous act of civil disobedience we all know with her refusal to give up her

seat.
Although it seems Blow is reviewing a book at times rather then paying tribute to Rosa Parks, he does talk about many things that clear up many misconceptions about Parks in today’s society. A misconception I had and I’m sure many other people had was that, Rosa Parks did not give up her seat because she was to tired. Parks is quoted saying “I did not tell anyone my feet were hurting” (Blow A23) and Blow’s intentions here are to clarify for all the ill informed people of the fiction that Parks was too tired to stand up but rather it was a act of civil disobedience. Another thing Blow mentions is that Rosa Parks was not the first person to perform an act of civil disobedience on a bus (Blow A23) and this is also another thing not many people know about. Much of this article seems to quote “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” and the intentions of Blow get blurry until the last line of this article, “Happy Black History Month”.