By Arturo R. García That segment, originally aired in 2010,
holds to what MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry calls “civil rights
lore” regarding Rosa Parks. But last week, just days before what
would have been her 100th birthday–today, to be exact–a new book
was released that has gained acclaim for painting a more vivid
picture of her life, on top of the story of her refusing to
yield that seat on that bus in Montgomery, AL. The Rebellious
Life of Rosa Parks details not only her involvement with the
NAACP, which actually began 12 years before her fateful
encounter (it also happens, Harris-Perry points out, that Parks
was thrown off of that bus 10 years before her famous moment of
disobedience.) As USA Today reported over the weekend, Parks
herself refuted that story in her autobiography, My Story
(1992): People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because
I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or
no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day …
No, the only tired I was, was