A Problem With Some Children's Literature

The Rosa Parks Myth and other mythologies

The Politics of Children’s Literature: What’s Wrong with the Rosa Parks Myth
Background Reading for Teachers and High School Students – PDF. By Herbert Kohl. 6 pages.
A critical analysis of children’s books about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Issues of racism and direct confrontation between African American and European American people in the United States are usually considered too sensitive to be dealt with directly in the elementary school classroom. When African Americans and European Americans are involved in confrontation in children’s texts, the situation is routinely described as a problem between individuals that can be worked out on a personal basis. In the few cases where racism is addressed as a social problem, there has to be a happy ending.

[Jo Ann Gibson Robinson was one of the main organizers of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.]

This is most readily apparent in the biographical treatment of Rosa Parks, one of the two names that most children associate with the Civil Rights Movement, the other being Martin Luther King Jr. The image of “Rosa Parks the Tired” exists on the level of a national cultural icon. Dozens of children’s books and textbooks present the same version of what might be called “Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.”


Link to Lesson Plan
Keywords: African American, European American, Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr., National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Freedom Train, U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Highlander Folk School, Tennessee, Voices of Freedom, Henry Hampton, Steve Fayer, E.D. Nixon, Women’s Political Council, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, Alabama State University, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church