Book features never-before-seen personal writing and photos

Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words features the civil rights icon’s personal papers from the Library of Congress, where the Parks Collection is housed. Previously unavailable to the public, the private manuscripts and handwritten notes detail Parks’ inner thoughts and ongoing struggles during and after the Montgomery bus boycott. She not only gives precise descriptions of her arrest and the segregated South, but also recalls her childhood resistance to inequality. The book details how she came to be the person who stood up by sitting down, dealt with the hateful and celebratory attention and inspired generations then, now and in the future to fight for respect.

Additionally, the book features 100 color and black-and-white photographs from the Parks collection—many appearing in print for the first time.

The author, Susan Reyburn, is a senior writer-editor in the Library of Congress Publishing Office. She is the author of Football Nation: Four Hundred Years of America’s Game, Women Who Dare: Amelia Earhart and Gardens and Landscapes of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and she is a co-author of Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress, The Library of Congress World War II Companion and The Civil War Desk Reference. She has also written for a wide variety of LOC publications on classic American film, theater, art and architecture as well as numerous works for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.