anthropologist and never got her ph.d.. she was never recognized formally as a scholar even though she was a researcher and so forth and in a way that liberated her to say what she wanted to say outside of a canon or outside of restricted boundaries that academic institutions and sometimes publishers put on people and that is part of the myth making. there are knowledge industries that regulate the distribution of certain narratives and certain information and the center of that. they don't call it censorship. that is not an interesting story or that doesn't speak to me. ..

>> so journalism and the articles and the pamphlets this -- people don't read 500 page book. they read articles. we need to have newspapers and blogs, that's really what makes these movements work. >> i want to go back to the thinking about what they offer us today and then kind of what the myths -- i often talk about them is a fables because i think they're told to us to give us certain messages i would argue are sort of problematic. i think most school children now learn that rosa parks was courageous. right? but that courage is framed through this image of a tired,

accidental act that spontaneously bursts a movement. right? when, if we actually look at her courage, what her courage is about is something far more profound. and first, it's the courage of perseverance. right? she has been active for two decades at that point, politically active for two decades. she had made stand before, people she knows made stands before and they basically have gone nowhere. i think part of the lesson of somebody like rosa park, many of these activists, is how much courage is about perseverance, and that even when she talks about her bus stand, one of my favorite quotes is she talks about her arrest being annoying, and irritating. and i think in that she has decided this is a line that's

too far. but she has no sense this is the beginning of a new chapter. right? and so i think part of what we, i think, learn from these histories is that you have to do things again and again and again, and you don't see the moment that history moves until it's -- we're well into it. and so i think part of what the -- what we might call tissue call it a children's book, sort of story of rosa parks. if we have that story, it's -- you make stand, everybody rises up. except that's really not how it works usually. right? and so i think part of what these histories allow us to see is the actual work of organizing the actual work of having to do it again and again and again, there's not going to be a sign that this act is going to be the important act.

and yet, and still, part of why i wanted to start with that november 27th mass meeting on the acquittal of emmett tills' murderers, is if we imagine rosa parks that night, imagine king that night, right? they have no sense that in a week, history is going to be moving in a very different way. and part of it is that sort of taking what you have and taking the fact you have done things before and not letting that be the stopping place but a starting place. >> the other thing i think is a value of your treatment of rosa parks and your work, and also your life, is the connectivity. there's a way in which figures get narrowed at times.

but there's also a way in which issues get some returning -- shrunk and how we measure success and defeat. rosa parks wasn't just concerned bat seat on a bus. so, similarly, rosen did not confine her notions of black freedom and black politics, which was her starting point but not her end point to the u.s. borders. she was concerned what was happening throughout the african content and what was happening in asia. she traveled and met with the maury people in new zealand. a sense of connectivity of struggles. i wag recently in belfast, northern ireland, and anyone who visited there, there are these amazing murals and a road on which there are solidarity murals which celebrate the grabbing freedom struggle in

ireland, and i think back to when we appreciated a radical radical jim the connections that have to be made between the communities because we'll always get the crumb victories we're see and ones that are not happen? able. so in the larger rosa parks story in the work that mary francis berry has done for so many years, talking about haiti. talking about south africa, et cetera, that big picture, that globe sense of freedom we have to embrace. if the histories are going to be meaningful, and our own present and future, in the light of the zimmerman decision, and in the light of the fact that the world is on fire in many respects, from syria, to cairo, to all over. so, those are struggles we have to about connected to and they're an extension of the black freedom movement.

>> i think what is a takeaway from all this is that we quote a lot, and i do it in speeches all the time, frederick douglass. we all say, can't get freedom without struggle. we all say that all the time. people can recite that. when it comes to struggle, sometimes we act like we don't believe that's what you have to do. that it ought to become easier and easier as time goes by. somebody said to me, you know, i wouldn't have thought that since we got obama, that the supreme court would be deciding things against us and that zimmerman would be free. we got obama and we were all celebrating. well, a year ago, wrote a book with a chapter in it called "blacks and the politics of redemption."

and we say that black people would not learn until we all got the right to vote and could vote freely and elect people and so on. that you can't get everything from voting. voting is important and you have to do it. but that protest is an essential ingredient of politics, and so while we're going around quoting frederick douglass, that's think about miss parks, miss robeson and all these people, and real rise that people tell you, you don't need to have a moment or be protesting. all you need to do is vote. first of all they're trying to suppress the vote in case you hadn't noticed. but the lesson is that you really, really have to be -- you need a movement and you need to be persistent, and you need to not give up, and you need to be strategic, and you need to think about what you're doing. so that you can make -- and that you can make change by doing

that. and you don't have to be violent. you can be totally nonviolent. many ways to make change. so i think these are the lessons i learned. >> i was at the memorial for vicki garvin in died in '95, i believe. they did a video, and she was in a nursing home. and she said, i'm telling all these people out there, you have no excuse for not being active because i'm here in this nursing home rite can letters, trying to educate myself. so it seems to me that many of the women we're talking about were long distance runners. right? i don't think rosa parks ever missed a step. right? >> i think it's really -- one of the amazing things about writing a biography of rosa parks it's literally a biography of struggle in the 20th century and goes right up -- she was northern 1913, her grandfather is a garveyite, the month comery

bus boycott, it's the war on poverty and antivietnam, it's sort of a fair criminal justice system to apartheid so the death penalty, to u.s. policy in central america, to the million man march. >> you said that in the clippings you were reading, she is cut thing newspapers out and reading about the world. >> right. so, part of rosa parks' papers are at wayne state, and part of that are rosa parks' clippings from the 1960s and 1970s. so you get to see the issues she is following. before we had sort of lexus nexus and all this stuff, what you would do if you were committed intellectual political activist, when you read something you would clip it out so you could show it to your friends. so rosa parks wasn't avid, avid

reader. read multiple newspapers a day, black newspapers, black periodicals, and she saved many of them. and they're at wayne and you can see them, and you can see these different issues she sort of clipped and is reading in the '60 asks and 70s. she gives that part of her papers in the late 'sevenness, and it's amazing what she is thinking about. and so the kind of whole very variety of issues from economics to labor to international issues, to criminal justice, and seeing those issues as being connected. but it wasn't just one, but many. and so it's an amazing -- >> jeanne, most people hear that be civil rights movement, you imagine everybody knows who rosa parks is, so if she went into the employment office right after this victory, she would be the first person to get a job. right?

what is the truth on that? >> one of the sort of hardest parts of writing the book on rosa parks is the chapter in the middle which i call the decade of suffering. and that is, i think, part of the kind of accidental sort of bus lady, right? one of my students always talk about the myth of the bus lady. and part of the problem with that myth is that it also misses the amount of sacrifice that these kinds of stands take, and that in rosa parks' -- her specific situation, what a tremendous sacrifice her bus stand was for her family's economic and physical health for a decade at least. so, literally, they cannot -- they never find work again, steady work again in montgomery, and then they move to detroit in

1957 and they still have trouble finding steady work. i mean in many ways, one of the heroes of my book is john conyer. rosa parks volunteers on john conyer's first campaign in 1964. persuades king to come to detroit on conyers' behave. king comes. conyers actually wins the primary by 40 votes. imagine american history, john conyers hadn't won. so, one of the first things he does,s he hires rosa parks in 1965. this is her first -- chev is working basically in what is a glorified sweat shop at stockton sewing company, doing piecework, and so part of i think -- again, i'm echoing what has been said, the amount of -- again, we all

know the frederick douglass quote but the kind of sacrifice it took. right? and the sacrifice it's not -- that goes on and on and on, and the willingness to keep doing it. she gets red-baited and instead of walking away, some goings to islander folk school and then they get red-baited and some people walk the other direction. and what rosa passion does is -- rosa parks asked her to be a sponsor and she says, i'd like to do something. so she walked into the fire in a certain kind of way. but highlander has been shut down in part because of, again, the red baiting that happened in the early '60s. so grappling with this, they're grappling with the difficulties many activists faced because of their work. >> do you think about the council member western version of what hero is.

that you got to -- not that you're going to make these sacrifices for your people. >> or a motion we have to be cautious of this, the notion of the single solitary person. mary mentioned the idea that barack obama was going to be the saviour. that's consistent with the notion that king or malcolm was a saviour, and maybe ella baker can be the saviour. but that mentality of leadership and politics is centering around individuals as opposed to collectives and communities comd movement buildings and organization, and i'm always struck, when i speak to young audiences, struck by the way cartoons and popular culture for children prepare us for that because there's always a single solitary hero that comes in and saves somebody, usually saving a womanment so there's that idea of a hero as leader and saviour,

and we mature and we still have that very immature view of politics. i wanted to pick up on what you said about the kinds of positions that people take. i actually was born in detroit the year that rosa parks came to detroit, and so my political awakening was in the context of the detroit rebellion in 1967. i new kenny cockerill, and all of the struggles as a teenager that i watched unfold in detroit, and i think we'd be remiss not a to mention the state of detroit today, the announcement of the bankruptcy of the city of detroit, which used to be a placey, particularly black working class people, could look to have a decent job and a decent life, and it was a place of struggle on all kinds of levels. labor struggles, struggles rained racism and police brutality. we had a group called, stress, stop the robberies, enjoy if a safe streets, decoy unit that would set up young black people

and shoot them or throw them in jail when the didn't respond to a ridiculous situation. so the struggle continues but these women remind us of the importance of taking difficult positions. rosa traveled to china two months after mao's revolution, spoke out about the what was happening throughout the -- at a time when that was absolutely seen as incendiary and sub versesive and so forth, and i think today, if these people were here, i hate to say what would they do. we don't have to ask that question. we have to ask, what should we do, and thinking out, not about the obvious issues but speaking out about the come complex issues which also include what is happening in south africa. the difficulties of a post apartheid situation where you still have shanty towns and still have mass unemployment and

so forth, and the situation in haiti or palestine. these are the issues of our time we have to name, embrace in the kind of courage that rosa parks or eslonda had. >> mary, don't want to out you as a long distance runner, but what would you tell young people looking at the verdict and thinking about how to work in a movement? >> if they're trying to learn how to -- i would say to young people -- not just young people but anybody, who is concerned about it, that they really should be organizing and bringing -- the legal system responses -- responds to pressure, and you may think the legal system is some kind of pure thingy judges make fair decisions and so on. i hope you don't think that because if you do, you're crazy. the legal system responds to

pressure, whether or not the justice department is going to find means of prosecuting this guy is going to depend on how much of a movement there is in the country. it's not going to depend on the little things people are reading in their office. if you believe that i have a bridge i want to sell you between brooklyn and manhattan for $40. so it's the movement. you have to keep bringing pressure to bear and organizing some sounding out what you believe and leaning on people, and when people start trying to cool you out, and say, oh, it's not that bad, you know, well, it is that bad. and so just keep on struggling. a couple of board i'm on, the folks on there were trying to -- some of our liberal friends were trying to cool us out because we were upset about trayvon bit telling us, it's not so bad. we got all these other problems

to work on. yes, we do, but we also have this problem. to work on. so, i think just telling people to organize, and to be consistent and to spend some of your time, and you might think that you could spend time doing more things that would be more fun, but i have to tell you that being somebody who has been a movement person all my life, have never been happier when i was involved with some other brothers and sisters, engaged in a struggle, no matter how hard it was, how long it took, or what we were doing, it was the best kind of high you could ever get. and so it is important work to do, and it can also be fun. >> that deserves applause. [applause] >> i've been looking at this

discussion of color blind racism and the post racial and a lot of other terms for this kind of thing. but i remember years ago at the ivy league schools other, lead places, there was this conversation that i found rather strange. instead of talking about abolishing racism, some people were floating the idea that what we needed was the brazilian solution. where people -- demobilize people by not -- let's not talk about race. and it occurred me, that's really a big program that these rulers have pulled out, this brazilian solution. we can't talk about race. and -- anyway, i hope i'm in the the only one that saw that. >> i don't think people believe that, and having been in brazil, i remember when a couple times i was there, and i was in the capitol of brazil, and i was doing something for the u.s.

government on education, and i was going around in meetings, and i kept seeing all these white people, and i said, i thought brazil had a whole lot of black people. i said to somebody, aren't there any black anymore brazil? and the said, oh, yes, i said how about in the government? they said, we have a woman, her anymore is ven neat to disill sew, she is a woman, she is in the government and she is black. i said, can i meet center she was the only one at that time. that was in the government. and then they had all these people i was going to meet with who i thought were black when i went back to rio, and they told me they weren't black because they don't have race in brazil. and i'm looking at them, well, you look black to me. i think that denying that there's race means that you can have racism and then you don't have to count it, talk about it,

say people should remedy it. it's like people say that zimmerman's killing trayvon had nothing to do with race. and i -- [applause] >> well, it did, and obviously the reason why he was following him in my opinion and looked at him and bothered hundred he was told not to, had to do with race. but everytime i had said that to people, you didn't say it. you should not talk about race. we're in post racial america. and then the president finally had to say something about it. i think he -- yeah he said race, i heard the word. so, i don't think -- we now have a proposal, you know, to stop counting people in the census, the studies that are done about the health of the black community, the white community, the latino community to stop keeping track of that stuff because that's about race.

but if you can't keep track of it, you can't analyze it, you can't remedy it, you can't talk about it. you can't improve it. so there's a lot of resistance to having people do that. so, yes, there is race. race is socially constructed in the academy, professors, we talk all the time about how race is not real, it's just socially constructed. and i repeat that, too. race is socially constructed. then i say, hey, it may be socially constructed but it is real. it has real impact. it can kill you while it's been socially constructive. so, yes, there is race, and -- >> lynching is essentially cop instrument instructive, too. >> it is a social construction. it's not -- but it's very real, political, social, and violent, and the thing about the trayvon martin case and the zimmerman trial, it's both exceptional and ordinary at the same time, and

that's the pain in it. it came to represent this larger question of mass incarceration, the criminalization of black youth. we had a teach-in about is in chicago a couple days ago. we had a room for 100 people, and people kept calling. we had to get a room for 500 people, and many, many young people came, some in the hip-hop community and spoken word community, and they cried. they just -- and they really were not just crying for trayvon martin, because that suggests, oh, my god, how could this happen in america. i wasn't, oh, my god, how could this happen in america. this is all too familiar, right? we have a prison industry that has an insatiable hung for young black and brun body that's part of the challenge of what we have to address in responding to -- whether zimmerman goes to jail or not, that larger problem is there and the elephant in the room that i think we have to have both the courage and compassion to address in all of

its largeness. >> since we're in new york, i have to say this. this problem of stopping black kids, latino kids, stop and frisk, you have here in new york. it's in other places but you got that problem in new york. people act like it's a new problem. i've been in media sin -- now they have thing thing about stop and frisk in new york. when did that happen? well, when i was chair of the civil right commission we did a report on the police department after diallo was killed. remember that? and we took all this evidence and subpoenaed all this material from the police department and did a big report to show that the black youth were being stopped and frisked and in most cases weren't charged with anything because they weren't doing anything, and analyzing, and made some recommendations. the police department said we're going stop doing that and never going to do it again. and of course they're doing it. and i heard recently that there's some talk of making your police chief, who is in charge

of all this, the head of homeland security in washington. i can't imagine that anybody thinks that's a good idea. but all of that is part of the attitude towards youth and making, as the president said, because there's a crime problem, this, there and the other, you just tar from -- use that word -- everybody with the same brush and every individual and treat kids in a way they shouldn't be treated. >> i want to echo mary's point in terms of thinking politically, they are quoting ray kelly, who presided over this massive, massive, stop and frisk, massively surveillance of the community, and i think that part of the aim making our voices heard has to be as new yorkers making our voices heard about what kind of leader ray

kelly was here and how that is not appropriate for -- to be elevated because of that work. because that would be elevating that work. and i think -- [applause] >> i think the second thing is to kind of come back to these histories is to sort of -- i think the part of the mythology of the histories also paper over the present-day reality. and so if we think about rosa parks and we think about people, remember rosa parks in 2005, and we have this massive state funeral for rosa parks. she becomes the first woman african-american to lie in honor at the capitol. that happens less than two months after the travesty of hurricane katrina. there's no way to think about why we had a state funeral for

rosa parks without trying to put a set of a more palatable image at a time when americans were asking much more important questions about persistent racial inequality in this country. so part of the dangers of the myth histories are the ways those histories then -- it was hockey story. look, what a great nation. this woman oh had been denied a seat on the bus, now she's in the capitol. look our great we are. we need be careful about the ways the civil rights movement is used to tell that story. and we'll hear it again as we come up to the anniversary of the march on washington. >> now for questions and answers you line up at this microphone. one thing a lot of people forget is no president attended king's funeral. it was a couple presidents living at the time. right? but none of them attended king's funeral. so, that's a wakeup call for

where we are. i know it's hard for you to believe but no president attended king's funeral. that's where we are. any questions or should we just keep on talking? ...

promoting women's leadership in the context of certain struggling and calling out very male centered and often time reforms of leadership in organization that she was involved in. she was involved in organization that our colleague eric mcduff if iy has written a book around. it was an organization of black women who were very international. they were in solidarity with women in kenya, south africa. many of the anticolonial struggles going on at the time. they also defended the right of black women in self-defense holding up the case of rosa lee who defended herself against an attacker and sent to jail. there was a large campaign about that. that kind of organization adds women not around narrow gender issues, but the right of women to exert leadership around, you know, traditional womens' issues, black women's issues and freedom issues in general. another organization she worked with was the all-african freedom

movement which she founded in london in 1961 with claudia jones who was new yorker originally from trinidad who was jailed and exiled for her communists beliefs. for her radical beliefs and they joined together to embrace the african des a per are a and talk about what liberations would mean for women all over the world. so we're holding up the issues i think was important. i think in term of how we see black women in history, i think we are still in a marcus syndrome. people fall in to it. i have looked in books it's embarrassing. we don't feel like token i. is necessary anymore. i think there's a way in which there's an exclusion. there's either a distortion in the case of rose is a parks or deletion in the case of it. particularly women who married to certain men in the movement.

i'm waiting for a great biography of loretta scott king. there's work on betty but there needs to be more. the women who were partners of, you know, who are in the shadows and women who can't be framed in the way, you know, are often left out. clearly gender was a part of it and growing consciousness and issue around which she organized. another journalist -- i want to mention this briefly. the journal short lived in the 1950s people who do archive l work it was a journal that paul cofounded with young historian freedom was a journal that highlighted black women's internationalism. it wasn't a journal that was a feminist or woman --

they taunt women quilters doing quilts for the movement. taunt women in south africa resisting the path. every single issue featured women in struggle. it's a publication we don't hear about. we -- women-centered journal of that era. rosa parks -- [inaudible] united front is organized. you have to write the -- [inaudible] joann -- right, i mean, hon and on. but by the -- it needs to happen cloture capital to make it a male definition millions of women were fighting in self-defense. so we have to change the term of

some of these discussions. >> thank you, yes. doctor, you mentioned micky who wrote for the periodical that he mentioned, freedom. one of the few places you can read in the original copy of the freedom which was a paper on which the editorial board here in the some berg. i did my dissertation here. a very helpfully librarian helped me pore over single issue. for truth and justs is in term of anticolonial work, and the importance of -- i want to ask about key point mentioned about pressure. it will respond to pressure. they will respond to pressure.

that's speaking to me deeply now, and also with regard to your work on el will baker that shows, like you said, the importance of organizing. people never -- one of the they think they think -- thicks she issued mentioned if the right kind of pressure was put on obama he would make the kind of decisions that would alleviate 0 prigs. -- oppression. if do think barack obama read your works, would he make the kinds of decisions he's making? you said very frankly even fell even if he that. those things that come about during the -- closing on public schools would still happened. and i think with your basic point. even if he knew about that.

and read your book -- could you elaborate on that? >> i think might be giving books a little bit too much credit. i wish my book was that influential. [laughter] i think the issue is beyond an individual that we need a systemic analysis solutions not around a single issue or a single individual. it's a matter of what we see as winning. because we can define winning in such a way that, okay, we won that struggle. you diminished what you're attempting to achieve so you have an art official sense of a victory. of all of the eloquent quotes elle will left me with is the

struggle is internal. it sounds simple pliesic. once we relax and have a sense of a plateau; right? that's when, you know, that's when a lot more problems and complicated problems begin to set in. because, you know, we're not staying on point. we're not continuing in a tradition of active organizing. so, i mean, there's many different ways to answer your question. it could be a long conversation, but, yeah, i don't think books do the job. books document and can inspire us to a certain extent, ultimately we have to have a resolve to go out and actually organize with friends, neighbors, coworkers, et. cetera. that's the challenge. >> you know, the word i've been using lately in my thinking it's a tug of war. i think then, you know, start to think it's over. it's a tug of war. we make progress. there's reaction. it's a -- >> at some point you pull and the other people all fall down; right? [laughter] >> really a tug of war.

[laughter] [applause] >> i'm actually interested in what shapes the consciousness of these women including shirley as a black female internationalist -- what sort of shapes their capacity to move beyond like their own central struggle here in the context of the us. and what extend how would they look at michelle obama? [laughter] >> that was an interesting add on there. >> exactly. [laughter] i mean, i think with rosa parks, i mean, there are many things that shape her political consciousness. certainly her family, her grandfather believing in self-defense. rosa parks was a lifelong believer in self-defense. her mother is definition of respectability. you ask and demand that people respect you. that's the respectability she

grows up. she meets the describe as the first real activist she ever met. who will become her husband, raymond parks. he's working on the scots borrow case. i think in term of thinking about the political consciousness. in many way it is starts there around the case. it starts with many of these cases; right, of both trying to protect black men from these kinds of charges, and simultaneously trying to get justice for black people, right, under the law. white brutality, cases of sexual violence as we talked about. cases of other brutality against black people. so her political consciousness starts in that work in that work. the scotts borrow case in the '40s and '30s around the cases as she in many ways take over the montgomery ncaap to make it

an activist chapter. then she's a reader. part of what i think we forget is the importance of black press. and the porn of the -- importance of the black press telling a different kind of news not just national but international. so that news of the world is coming in to many people's houses. that's informing them the struggle for the black struggle is not just a struggle in the united states. but a global struggle. >> you see a report she was also in the front of the bookstore at every lecture in detroit. >> right. i did a lot of interview -- the second half of my book is about the post montgomery, and i talked a to a lot of people that worked with her. she would be sitting there in the front row and she tells the story of going to a number of things at the shrine in detroit. she would be in the front and would like to have hand work. she liked to keep her hands busy. she would literally be

everywhere. that's what people told me. everywhere. a long time black bookstore owner in detroit, people may know ed. it would get there and be like damage, it's a rosa. she would be there. part of it was trying to soak up all of the different sort of programs, and knowledge and, you know, sort of what all the different kinds of -- i think the other kind of commonality here is the commonality of sort the united front and go where people who are doing good work are going. many of these -- long distance runners are doing that. right. they show up because people are trying to do good work. you don't have to agree with everything. they go anyway. >> i think the question of consciousness is really important, and i think for those who work in universities is particularly important because sometimes we think, you know, people think that's the locust of learning and understanding the world.

i was impressed about the dire i are writing. when the most of the world looked to africa as back word and needing to be uplifted including some african-americans, as she went there and said that's where i became an intellectual. that's where in talking with people who were not formally trained, she began to understand the world in a way she did not understand it. simply through books and academic training? so i think demystifying the way which knowledge gets constructed, and demystify universities as a sole viz inventory of knowledge. and it's important in term of where consciousness comes from. you know, i remember my first economics class. we can't talk about process.

it's like, how do we talk about economics and not talk about profit. you can theorize the material world in to something unrecognizable, but then going in to communities and communities of struggle. i agree with mary, that was a beautiful statement about feeling a certain energy and resilience and joy by trying to understand the world people who want to understand it to change it and not just understand it to get paid; right? which is partly what the university tries to do to us. i think the consciousness of a shirley was finding intellectual sources of knowledge outside of formal institutions. >> i wanted to say something quickly about the question of gender. gender. because it occurred to me that first the movement -- it was -- she was lead a movement with men and women at the time when women didn't need movements.

she was in the late 19th century didn't need social movement with men in them. women would be in clubs and different things. here she was the leader of this whole deal and went prison. the movement in the end, became the movement. in fact the chapter in new orleans is the chapter that mother moore came out of. some you may know queen mother moore. there's a continuity then that and the history of black nationalism going all the way up to an interest in africa and internationalism. the congresses and six pack through congress was the last one we had. and the rest of them. you ought to think about gender. when i was thinking about nelson mandela the other day,whinny mandela would not have done the

years he was in prison. you would have never heard of nelson. [applause] it was whinny that put herself on the line. half the time she was out there in detention out there by herself where they put her. the rest of the time she kept his image before the public. she did it. all of that stuff she did. the thing that is so impressive is nobody talks about it. that's number one. and number two, because she -- in the end, did some things like that people say why did she do that? some stuff at the end of her life, a few little things that some people don't like, her personal life and other stuff. if you had to live all those years you might do something a little changey too. [laughter] therefore she shouldn't be denounce forked that. the other thing to keep in mind is that nelson's second wife, she's the freedom fighter. well the freedom fighter before

she married, and has her own thing going for herself. i once wrote a paper about the civil rights movement male leaders and what their wives did and contributed to. most of the time the wives were doing most of the thinking, to tell you the truth. nobody was thinking about it. the gender thing, we have to appreciate what happened to people and that appreciate that women can be leaders too. if you think about it now, most civil rights organization are headed by men. is that true? the first time one had a woman in charge of it was when elaine joandz -- jones became one of the heads. which is one of the smallest ones. usually women don't -- whatever they do the naacp had chairs of the board that were women. i'm a life member.

i can say that. women get overlooked. the gender thing is disabling in at love ways. [applause] presented a whole paper at the conference and swayed the crowd and barack said that's what i've been talking about. the way get thrown out -- the other thing i want to say on the education piece is that most of these women are educating themselves. the higher education but educates herself and the movement is a revolutionary school.

they have the intellectual component to it. i say we have time for maybe one question. >> i don't know if we do. are we out of time? >> we are out of time. i'm so sorry. >> that's what the sign is. >> it's been a great conversation. [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] and you're watching and listening to booktv's live coverage of the 15th annual harlem book fair. in harlem, new york, new york and now brooklyn college -- political science professor is joining us. you heard her on the panel. we had the numbers up. we're going to begin with a call from michael right here in new york city.

hi, michael. please, go ahead. >> caller: good afternoon, professor thee. to both of you. [inaudible] thank you -- peter knows what i'm saying. i have had rosa parks at my doorway and i would touch it just like the jewish people the scriptture at the doorway. i'm a pastor at world life -- [inaudible] during the discussion, the facilitator that we need to change the term. my mother's born 25 mile south of -- [inaudible] the point of the british gun three month after dr. king was killed. i have worked to have a human rights court. if we can bring in a bad landlord or bad tenant in ten

days time. why not -- [inaudible] white is a mental illness. white tuesday not exist. hispanic deals with a language. asian deals with a continue man. -- continent. >> we're a little tight on time. if you can get to the point of your question. . >> caller: i would like to know, first of all, the cost of taking the stand and cost me. if you can address the cause to mrs. parks, and -- thank you. we appreciate it. >> i think it's i think part of what we don't know is the kind of tremendous they take. she loses her job one month to the boycott. her husband loses his job. they spend the entire year of the boycott even without work. the buses are desegregated.

they have trouble finding work. they never find steady work. they are getting steady death threats. eight months after the successful completion of the montgomery busboy cot. her family has to leave montgomery for detroit. those economic troubles continue. it's really a decade of sort of health and economic instability for the parks in many ways because of the courageous stand she made. >> in ohio. good afternoon, you are on. >> caller: thank you. again, i'm -- [inaudible] i want to address the business about marginalizing rosa parks. -- [inaudible] addresses how a slave came to modern times and tells us how to deal with crack cocaine problems. i want to address that with rosa parks. there have some artists in our history who have done and said

things that are against rosa parks. can you address that aspect of her life? >> i think there is -- in our popular culture and public culture a very -- as the panlt tabling -- panelists talking about the one dimensional view as the bus lady. she becomes a hero for children. one of the fascinating thing there was wasn't a scholarly biography on rosa parks. she's one of the most important and honored americans in the 20th century. so i think that sort of discrepancies between this, you know, she's everywhere and yet she's nowhere. so the kind of fullness of her, the political figure and the political actor sort of we don't know even though, you know, again you can ask any school children. they would know the name rosa parks. again the kind of full history that gets her to the moment and what she does after, i think has

been much less well known. >> did she -- was she active in the civil rights movement after montgomery? >> absolutely. so she spends more than half of her political life in detroit in what she calls the promise land that wasn't. sort of fighting, sort of around issues of jobs, housing and school segregation, police brutality in her new hometown of detroit and sort of across the country. i think many times we see the civil rights movement having this sort of end in 1964, 1965 and the passage of the voting rights act is passed. she was there. her work continues on. she sees some things have been solved. many haven't been solved. she's against the war in vietnam. she's active around the criminal justice system that begins in the 19 30ss and begins in the 1990. she's to the end of her life

saying the struggle is not over. there's much work to be done. there's much racial and social inequality. often her legacy is used to say the movement is in the past. it's done. when the actual rosa parks said we have much work to do. >> last call for the guest from lori ann in washington. >> caller: hi. how are you? >> good. please go ahead, ma'am. >> i was, you know, it's funny i was thinking of rosa parks for the last week on and off. i have a picture, a black and white photo of her being arrested and fingerprinted as the -- the bus situation she wouldn't sit in the back of the bus. i believe that's arresting photograph from that, and she's been inspirational to me just because of that alone all of my life. i'm excited to find out how to get the book because i have not

seen one about her. i would love to purchase the book. she's one of my civil rights icons in my lifetime. >> lori ann, very quickly. why have you been thinking about rosa parks the last week? >> you know, i'm not quite sure. she comes in and out of my thoughts for the last thirty years. my sister gave me a laminated picture, a black and white photograph of her being arrested about six years ago. i don't really -- i can't. put a finger on it. i've always been -- >> all right. thank you. >> i think part -- many are thinking about rosa parks this week as the sort of the zimmerman verdict has come down and we having a needed conversation about race and the criminal justice system. i think we need to take that conversation further and sort of think about what we talk about in the panel today was thinking about sort of what so is a parks does with the kind of feelings many of us have of sadness of

frustration with sort of these issues and sort of turning those feelings in to action. right. rosa parks november 27, goes to the meeting. four days later she makes a bus stand. i think many can take that history as a way to sort of take sort of some of the feelings of the past week and how to move forward with them. >> the " rebellious life of rosa parks." available online. politic and religion at the harlem book festival is about to begin. >> good afternoon. welcome to the last panel for today. my name is valerie, i'm executive director of art sanctuary in philadelphia, and it is my distinct pleasure --

[applause] thank you. check it out. it's my pleasure to introduce our moderator who will be moderating the last what will be an exciting panel. an assistant professor of religion and african-american studies at -- religion in america with the particular focus on black communities and culture in the united states. ..