Hello and welcome to this bonus episode of America, a history podcast recorded straight after our recently published episode, Who is Rosa Parks? I'm joined now by the guests from that episode, Nicholas Grant and Jean-Pierre Harris to discuss this a little bit more. Both of you thank you so much for hanging on. Thank you. Very happy to do it. And firstly, thank you for joining
me on the main podcast as well. Anyone that's listening to this, do check that out. genuinely such a fascinating discussion about the life of Rosa Parks and how that sort of fits in
to the broader sort of civil rights movement. I think, you know, it's something that we touched on in the main episode, but, you know, it's so easy to just think of Rosa Parks and these other figures as, you know, for instance, you know, she was just a brave woman who sat on a bus and said she wouldn't move and then all the white people were like, amazing, let's
end racism. But there's so much more to the whole conversation than that. And, you know, I wonder if, you know, either of you could maybe expand on that a bit in terms of how we're teaching the civil rights movement and why, you know, these particular instances, you know, shouldn't necessarily be addressed in total isolation. I was wondering if I could ask kind of a follow-up question based around that to Jean, because of all of the work that you've
done, like making this in terms of public history, Jean, like in terms of the Zin. education project, the documentary, converting the first book into a book for young adults. And then juxtaposing that with the recent comments at Trump's inauguration dinner about Musk and Trump being similar to Parks. You've done so much work on that, that has resonated with so many people, but then
you still see this happening by people who you kind of expect it from. How has it been doing that public engagement work and that public history work and how rewarding has it been? I guess it's my question to kind of lead on from what Liam was saying in terms of re-educating people about the civil rights movement and translating the kind of cutting edge scholarship that you and others have been doing on there. Yeah. So I mean, I think sometimes it feels like pushing
against a tidal wave. And in some ways, like the Trump Musk stuff is just horrifying. But some of the stuff that makes me even kind of maybe more upset is like, you know, sometimes like a city will decide for her birthday that they're going to like cordon off a seat on the bus for her. It's like, who needs that? Right? Like who asked for that? Like if we're going to actually honor Rosa Parks, right? And Rosa Parks to the end of her life, she dies
in 2005, is like the movement's not over. The struggle continues, we have a lot more work to go. And so the ways that people honor her that's about like just putting it in the past or fixing her on the bus when there's so many injustices that she was fighting that we still need done. So it both feels very overwhelming. And then, as you said, Nick, I sort of I feel like we're just the wraparound of the project. So just trying to intervene on many different
levels. That I came first to the book in some ways very horrified by the way that she'd been trapped in the kind of young adult curriculum and that there was no serious footnoted biography of Rosa Parks till my book came out. But so many children's books, young adult books. So for years, I really resisted doing a young adult book because I was in some ways I didn't want her like I was, you know, in many ways part of the point was like she was worthy of a long
serious footnoted biography. But then, right, the kind of skin in the game of, well then what are people gonna teach and needing to, and felt like I didn't have the, like it wasn't okay just to be like, I don't like this, I don't like this, like that I needed to then do some of the work. So we did the YA and then the amazingness of, you know, getting the Ford Foundation to
kind of fund this sort of curriculum building around both the YA and the film. and kind of getting to see and imagine, you know, I think for Nick and I, right, like having students come to us that actually have learned this differently is sort of the dream, right? That you don't have to unlearn that, that you don't have to like, I don't have to teach them to like get rid of the things that they, you know, all these like false binaries in their heads, civil rights
versus black power, north versus south, right? That they're coming, that the dream is that they're gonna come in. right, with a more rich sense of this history. And so we can go so much farther. So the public stuff, I mean, it's both very exciting. So imagining that possibility, right, which has not really happened that much yet, but sometimes I do get students who have learned some of this. And so imagining a generation that learns this differently is really exciting.
And I do think people are extremely hungry for it. And that part of this kind of backlash, at least in the United States, against the teaching of black history is precisely because young people are so hungry, right? It is because there's a demand, because teachers are starting to teach things differently that we've seen in the US, particularly over the past four or five years, this like book banning, but it's because there's a growing demand for it, right?
And so it's sort of... both the kind of best of times, worst of times, feeling with that, right? Where it's like, these are horrifying laws and yet the laws are happening precisely
because the demand is there. Not to be a bit of a Debbie Downer about this, but I do wonder, like, one of the risks nowadays with people wanting to be proactive and do their own research and really explore something like this is that there's such a proliferation of... misinformation and in an age where America is very divided and at times these are on you know racial grounds and how that ties in politically as a conversation for another day but you know there's a lot
of stuff out there that isn't necessarily accurate you know is there is can that be a risk to people who do want to go out there and try and you know find out their own information? I think it speaks to the importance of having things like that that's available, right? Like, and that that's there to count some of those myths and those narratives or to be like reliable information that is coming from like peer reviewed work that has been kind of debated and discussed.
by lots of people over time and have that translated. I think that that's really important. I don't know, I could be completely wrong. And I'm aware that I teach in a, you know, kind of medium sized UK university with students who've chosen to come and do history and politics. So I'm talking to, I'm in a slight bubble there as well. I think I've got a lot of students who are incredibly skeptical of things that they hear and see online. And they could just be
really good at using AI, but I don't think that's the case. I think they are actually like, go and do research and to find out information on their own, particularly in the last like three or four years, which I hadn't seen previously. And I think they kind of realised the importance of trying to find counter narratives and to try and like find evidence, not everyone. And I kind of said that like, but I always I'm teaching students who are very good at questioning things
and say, hang on, that doesn't sound right. Or who kind of go off and do their own independent research and then kind of hit me with those questions, which I often don't know the answer to. to, but they've kind of, you know, thought about it and they're critiquing the information that they're getting. So sorry, that's going off on a bit of a tangent, but I think... Yeah,
it's incumbent on people in academia to translate research that they believe to be correct. I mean, as much as research can be correct or can be as accurate as possible and to disseminate it into the public arena so that you can counteract that misinformation. But I do think younger people on the whole are not everyone. And I know there's a subset that can go down rabbit
holes and follow kind of myths and conspiracy theories. But there's a lot of people, I think, who genuinely kind of take a lot of the stuff that they see online or they see from politicians with a massive pinch of salt. and want to do their own research and want that to be good research. And that's kind of what the arts and humanities can offer, I think, in an age where it's being decimated around the world as something that has any value. But I think that's what
it does offer in this age of AI and misinformation and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, I think it's a really important point there and where budgets are being pinched around the world and universities everywhere, I think the value of, you know, a seminar room to having these discussions and sharing these ideas. So I'm gonna leave it on that optimistic note. Nick, Jean, thank you so much for joining me. And Jean, do remind everyone where they
can buy your book and get more information from you. Again, my book, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, both the original edition, and then there's also one for young adults, they're available any place you buy books. You can order them any place you buy books, including, but certainly not limited to Amazon. And then we designed a curriculum to go with the young adult book and the film. And that can be found at Zinn for Howard Zinn, Z-I-N-N education
project under the campaigns on top teaching Rosa Parks. Thank you. Wonderful. No, thank you for joining us on this podcast and anyone listening, if you haven't already, you can listen to the full episode right now on this feed. We'll put the link in the show notes and If you like what you hear you can support the show from as little as just $1 and if you can spare three then you get early access to all of our content as well which will make
us really happy. Thank you so much for listening and goodbye.