2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work Biography / Auto Biography2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks examines her six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movementPresenting a corrective to the popular notion of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who, with a single act, birthed the modern civil rights movement, Theoharis provides a revealing window into Parkss politics and years of activism. She shows readers how this civil rights movement radical soughtfor more than a half a centuryto expose and eradicate the American racial-caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice.