Photo credit: Troy Glasgow/AP
Winter State Entertainment has recently announced that a feature biopic about civil rights icon Rosa Parks is set to go into production in 2019.
While there have been other movies made about the courageous seamstress who refused give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus during the Jim Crow era, the new project will be the first feature film to tell her story on the big screen.
The upcoming biopic entitled “Rosa” will depict the first 24 hours following her historic arrest on December 1, 1955 – as well as shed light on Parks’ consistent contributions to the civil rights movement both before and after the bus incident.
Distinguished professor of political science and author of “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks,” Jeanne Theoharis, will serve as the consulting producer on the new film. Her book won a Leticia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians in 2013 and then in 2014 won an NAACP Image Award.
“While most Americans have heard of Rosa Parks, the details of what happened on that night she was arrested, and her lifetime of political courage and activism, are largely unknown,” Theoharis said in a statement to Deadline. “The real story of Rosa Parks is far different, and even more inspiring and relevant for our times than the tale most children learn in school.”
Script writer, Charlie Kessler, added: “We are honored to be working alongside Professor Theoharis. Rosa Parks is an inspiration, and our goal is to be able to use this project to raise awareness for the Rosa and Raymond Park Institute for Self-Development. Ms. Parks did not have any children, so her institute is her legacy.”
The presentation of this film on one of the highest media platforms in the country will ensure that everyone will know of the passion, fearlessness, and overall greatness that Mrs. Parks’ petite 5’3″ frame embodied, leaving a lasting legacy of determination, vision, and progress.