Today’s theme for University Press Week is Presses in Conversation with Authors. In our entry in the blog tour, our executive editor Gayatri Patnaik interviews Jeanne Theoharis, author of the 2014 NAACP Image Award-winning The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of CUNY and the author of numerous books and articles on the civil rights and Black Power movements, and the politics of race in contemporary America. She is also series editor for a new Beacon Press series, Stride Toward Justice: Confronting Race, Gender & Class in the United States. The series offers progressive voices writing on and at the intersection of race, gender and class and is an urgent response to the injustices of our times and the ideas that hide and sustain them. Theoharis’s coeditor for the series is Melissa Harris-Perry, Presidential Endowed Chair in Politics and International Affairs, the director of the Anna Julia Cooper Center at Wake Forest University, and host of Melissa Harris-Perry, which airs weekend mornings on MSNBC. Read more →

By Jeanne Theoharis | I wrote The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks to challenge the limited stories and troubled uses of Parks and the movement. There was nothing natural or passive about what Rosa Parks did but rather something fiercely determined. It was not a singular act but part of her larger lifelong history of activism, a string of acts of bus resistance in the years preceding her stand, and a collective uprising following her arrest that led to a mass movement in Montgomery. To the end of her life, Parks believed the struggle for racial justice was not over and she continued to press for more change in the United States. Read more →

Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, for refusing to surrender her seat on a bus to a white passenger. In an excerpt from The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, Jeanne Theoharis traces the aftermath of Parks’s arrest and the lead-up to the bus boycott, and shows exactly what was at stake for Parks when she made the decision to let her arrest be used as the rallying point for a new movement. Read more →

Many have cast the young protesters in Ferguson, MO, as dangerous and reckless and not living up to the legacy of the civil rights movement. In fact, according to Jeanne Theoharis, they are following in the footsteps of civil rights icon and lifelong activist Rosa Parks. Read more →

Beacon authors respond to a week of intense protest in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager killed by a police officer. Read more →

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, we've put together a list of essential books that we hope will inspire future generations to come together for progressive social change. Read more →

The Broadside's official guide to Beacon's annual holiday sale. Save 20% off everything at www.beacon.org with promo code GIFT20, including titles by Richard Blanco, Lauren Slater, Mike O'Connor, Jeanne Theoharis, Rodger Streitmatter and Bill Ayers. Read more →

Jeanne Theoharis, author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, examines the true legacy—of activism, struggle, and radical transformative change—left by Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela. Read more →

More than a half century later, the Montgomery Bus Boycott still resonates as a powerful example of nonviolent resistance. Read more →

Congress and the President honored Rosa Parks with a statue in the Capitol Rotunda, but our leaders missed the truly radical spirit of the lifelong activist. Read more →

This post originally appeared at Huffington Post. Today would have been the 100th birthday of Rosa Parks. To honor the day, we share these Ten Things You Didn't Know About Rosa Parks, compiled by Jeanne Theoharis, author of The Rebellious... Read more →

She was more than just a tired woman on a bus. A new book looks at her six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement. Read more →