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.