Rosa Parks Beyond the Bus: Life, Lessons, and Leadership

This is a great informative book. I was surprised on every page and had trouble stopping even to go to bed. Finish reading it before I knew it but learned so much. Well written. So much information and facts. Love it and brought copies for several of my friends.

Like most people, I know Rosa Parks from her Montgomery bus passenger confrontation. After reading Beyond the Bus, my admiration for her has increased even more than I expected. What a gentle, yet determined spirit she had! The life stories contained in this wonderful book demonstrate her vibrancy and skilled persistence and courage. Her role in history is well deserved and Beyond the Bus truly solidifies her stature as a great role model and icon. Itwas a pleasure to read about such a wonderful woman by such a wonderful author.

educational value

H.H. Leonards in her most recent book details her and Mrs. Rosa Park's life along with her experiences with Mrs. Parks. The book begins by introducing the moment that she received a phone call that preceded what would eventually turn out to be a memorable ten years with Mrs. Parks at Leonards’ O Museum and Mansion and continues from there. The title of the book is significant as many only know of Mrs. Parks from her feat of bravery by not moving her seat on a bus for a white man, while Leonards chronicles parts of Parks’s life from what she had learned from the civil rights activist over the course of a decade. I thought the book to be well-written and it details a well-thought-out and engaging recollection of H.H. Leonards’ time spent with Mrs. Rosa Parks and Parks’s life.Reading the book, I was greatly moved by some of the stories that Leonards mentions. One of them was the part when Mrs. Parks was attacked in her Detroit home. After reading that section I took a moment to think about some of the events and my life and how lucky I am. Leonards shares many of her notable experiences with the renowned civil and women’s rights activist and then intertwines her story with that of Mrs. Parks. I began reading the book with the preconceived notion that Leonards may have been somewhat exaggerating her experiences and what she had learned from Mrs. Parks, but after reading my perspective was changed. That being, I learned so much about the two and how strong and personal of a relationship the two had.Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and welcome all and everyone to take some time to read it along with taking the time to talk and connect with others around you. Every connection matters, and as H.H. Leonards details through her time with Mrs. Rosa Parks people you don’t know can have a large impact on your life.

This is a well written, informative book. I could not put the book down. I finished the book within a week. So much I didn’t know, and I thought I knew a lot on Mrs. Parks! I told a bunch of my friends about it. It’s a great birthday present for anyone that wants to know about the parts of history you don’t always hear about growing up.

Having Visited the O Museum in Washington DC this Book really had an impact on me. A great educational read because I’m not gonna lie I didn’t know the story until I read this Book.Highly suggest this read.

“Rosa Parks Beyond the Bus: Life, Lessons, and Leadership” (R.H. Boyd June 2022), by H. H. Leonards is a remarkable, insightful, and lovingly written book about Parks, the “the first lady of civil rights." Published by a historic Black publishing house, the book is full of historical data but reaches far beyond mere facts. It is a warm and studied memoir of both Parks and her friendship with the author. Now, nearly seventeen years after Rosa Parks’s death, Leonards’ book on this extraordinary woman and their relationship is appropriately being released on Juneteenth, June 19, 2022. The book is a heartfelt memoir based upon what Leonards calls “memories, anecdotes, incidents, vignettes, aphorisms and observations.”Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was a Southern Black woman born into the Jim Crow South. She became an icon of the civil rights movement in 1955 after her refusal to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, AL. sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and led to the rise of a young Montgomery minister, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.The author, H. H. Leonards is a much younger White woman, by her own admission raised “sheltered” in the Midwest, with seemingly little or nothing in common with Parks. Perhaps ironically, Leonards had never heard of Rosa Parks when a representative of the NAACP called her in 1994. The man on the other end of the phone line asked Leonards if a frail, wounded Parks could come and stay with her while she recovered from a vicious beating that occurred in her home in Detroit, MI.This was the beginning of a deep, ten-year friendship between the two women, so deep in fact that Parks would call Leonards “Daughter.”I received a free copy of the book but these observations are my own honest opinions, and I recommend the book highly.

As a person who has known and loved the O Museum in the Mansion for many years, I was already quite aware of Mrs. Rosa Parks’ time at the Mansion. I knew that the author and Mrs. Parks had been dear friends. I had heard stories about their friendship.Rosa Parks Beyond The Bus moved me deeply. I read it in two intense sittings. It brought to life the magic that the two women shared together. I was touched and wiped my eyes more than once as the beautiful revelations leapt from the pages. If there is such a thing as a “fairy tale friendship,” here is the evidence.That is why this is not a history book or even a biography, but is the deeply personal story about what it was like to be “daily, best friends” with such a famous but such a quiet, shy, self-effacing American hero. The stories, many of them probably never told before, document the soul and the heart of one of this country’s great Americans. This book will become a critical part of the fullest story of Mrs. Rosa Parks and her legacy.(The Reviewer – Alvin Stenzel now lives in The Villages in Florida and is the author of The Crystal Pond, a novel that highlights the special imagination that exists for women.)