Michael Schudson's Article 'Telling Stories About Rosa Parks'
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Michael Schudson article “Telling Stories about Rosa Parks” is about how the standard story that most students learn about Rosa Parks in school is completely different from the revised standard story most adults know about. Michael addresses in the article how in the standard story of Rosa Parks tend to leave out her politically active role in her community. The standard story makes it sound like it is a surprise that Rosa was taking this stand, when really Rosa did put some thought into it even though it wasn't planned. The way the standard story is told to children discounts the role she played as an activist before. This standard version of the story became popular because it fits the cultural template about the power of the individual.…show more content… The revised standard story informs the readers that Rosa sat in the first row for blacks, not in the front of the bus. Rosa Parks wasn't a tired old seamstress, she was 42 years old. Parks was actually a Civil Rights activist and in NAACP, had a record of political action. The standard story of Rosa Parks fosters a sense that history is a matter of individual motivation, and individual fault or achievement, and not of more complicated social processes. Also the revised story shows spontaneity in social protests. In Michael’s article he used other sociologist point of view to determine why the standard story was used more than the revised story.
The social imagination in Michael’s article “Telling Stories about Rosa”, he along with the other authors questioned what made the standard story so much more interesting and useful than the revised story. They tried to find ways to justify and think about how life and the fact that colorism may have affected the reason why the standard story was more popular. Michael