Audiobooks by Jeanne Theoharis

King of the North: Martin Luther King’s Freedom Struggle Outside of the South

From the New York Times bestselling author, a radical reframing of the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr.'Theoharis shows us through penetrating research and sensitive, scholarly insight that Dr. King not only waskeenly aware of the history of antiblack racism in the North, but battled it from the very beginning of his career.'-Henry Louis Gates Jr.The Martin Luther King Jr. of popular memory vanquished Jim Crow in the South. But in this myth-shatteringbook, award-winning and New York Times bestselling historian Jeanne Theoharis argues that King's time inBoston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago-outside Dixie-was at the heart of his campaign for racial justice.King of the North follows King as he crisscrosses the country from the Northeast to the West Coast, challengingschool segregation, police brutality, housing segregation, and job discrimination. For these efforts, he wasrelentlessly attacked by white liberals, the media, and the federal government.In this bold retelling, King emerges as a someone who not only led a movement but who showed up forother people's struggles; a charismatic speaker who also listened and learned; a Black man who experiencedpolice brutality; a minister who lived with and organized alongside the poor; and a husband who-despite hisflaws-depended on Coretta Scott King as an intellectual and political guide in the national fight against racism,poverty, and war.King of the North speaks directly to our struggles over racial inequality today. Just as she restored Rosa Parks'scentral place in modern American history, so Theoharis radically expands our understanding of King's life andwork-a vision of justice unfulfilled in the present.

Jeanne Theoharis (Author), Jasmin Walker, TBD (Narrator)

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The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work - Biography / Auto Biography 2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013 The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks examines her six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement Presenting a corrective to the popular notion of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who, with a single act, birthed the modern civil rights movement, Theoharis provides a revealing window into Parks's politics and years of activism. She shows readers how this civil rights movement radical sought-for more than a half a century-to expose and eradicate the American racial-caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice.

Jeanne Theoharis (Author), Judith West, TBD (Narrator)

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A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

Explodes the fables that have been created about the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a "helpmate" but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband's activism in these directions. Moving from "the histories we get" to "the histories we need," Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and "polite racism" in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice--which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done.

Jeanne Theoharis (Author), Kim Staunton (Narrator)

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