I was contacted by my co-director, Johanna Hamilton, who had connected with Jeanne about the book, and was quite astonished that a full-length documentary film had not been made about Rosa Parks. And she contacted — she read the book, contacted me and asked if I wanted to work with — told me to read the book and asked if I wanted to work with her on getting a documentary — on making a documentary.
And as I was reading the book, again and again I was astonished to learn so much more about Mrs. Parks’s life and her work and her activism. And I just thought it was a story that hadn’t been told on so many different — you know, so many different levels, in terms of the work that — the activism and work that Mrs. Parks did before the bus boycott, her relationship with her husband and how he brought her into activism, and all of her work post the boycott, how she got to Detroit and, you know, the work that she did in Detroit.
I think you and Yoruba starting with that memorial, that funeral, is acutally where I started, because I was both transfixed by it — it’s an incredible, really unprecedented honor for a woman, activist, for a civil rights activist, and yet, as both of you are noting, she gets smaller and smaller in it. She’s talked about as accidental. She’s talked about as, right, not a troublemaker. She’s incessantly referred to as quiet, not angry, humble, quiet.
— source democracynow.org | Oct 17, 2022