Rosa Parks archives remain unsold in warehouse

0

NEW YORK (AP) — At a time when interest in civil rights
memorabilia is rekindled, a lifetime’s worth of Rosa Parks’ belongings —
among them her Presidential Medal of Freedom — sits in a New York
warehouse, unseen and unsold.
Parks’ archives could be worth
millions, especially now that 50th anniversaries of the civil rights era
are being celebrated and the hunt is on for artifacts to fill a new
Smithsonian museum of African-American history.
But a years-long
legal fight between Parks’ heirs and her friends — a dispute similar to
the court battle among Martin Luther King Jr.’s heirs — led to the
memorabilia being taken away from her home city of Detroit and offered
up to the highest bidder.
So far, no high bidder has emerged.
Parks
is one of the most beloved women in American history. She became an
enduring symbol of the civil rights movement when she refused to cede
her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man. That triggered a
yearlong bus boycott that helped to dismantle officially sanctioned
segregation, and lift King to national prominence.
Because of the
fight over Parks’ will, historians, students of the movement and the
general public have had no access to items such as her photographs with
presidents, her Congressional Gold Medal, a pillbox hat that she may
have worn on the Montgomery bus, a signed postcard from King, decades of
documents from civil rights meetings, and her ruminations about life in
the South as a black woman.
Parks wanted people to see her
mementos and learn from her life, said Elaine Steele, a longtime friend
who heads the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, a
foundation Parks co-founded in 1987 in Detroit.
"In my opinion, it was quite clear what she wanted," Steele said.
Steele’s
lawyer, Steven Cohen, said Parks’ heirs and the institute certainly
could come to agreement on sending the artifacts to an appropriate
institution "if we could close out the estate and get away from" the
probate court.
He said he hopes to resolve the matter in six months to a
year.
"It will happen," Cohen said. "But right now we’re
hamstrung, because the probate court continues to want to monitor and
control our activities. And it shouldn’t."
Parks, who died in 2005
at age 92, stipulated in her will that the institute bearing her name
receive a trove of personal correspondence, papers relating to her work
for the Montgomery branch of the NAACP, tributes from presidents and
world leaders, school books, family Bibles, clothing and furniture. Her
nieces and nephews challenged her will, and her archives were seized by a
court; a judge ordered it sold in one lump sale.
King’s
belongings also are locked in a legal dispute. King’s sons, Martin
Luther King III and Dexter Scott King, want to sell or lease their
father’s Nobel Peace Prize medallion and one of his Bibles; King’s
daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, opposes such a move. Because of the
squabbling, a judge ordered the Bible and prize medal to be held in a
safe deposit box controlled by the court until the disagreement can be
resolved.
Since 2006, Guernsey’s Auctioneers have kept Parks’
valuables in a New York warehouse, waiting for someone to offer the $8
million to $10 million asking price. By comparison, the city of Atlanta
paid $32 million to King’s children for his papers, and the Henry Ford
Museum paid $492,000 just for the bus aboard which Parks took her 1955
stand for civil rights.
Rex Ellis, associate director of
Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian National Museum of African
American History and Culture, thinks Parks’ archives should be in a
museum or research facility. Ellis would not say whether Smithsonian
officials are interested in buying it, just that they would "love for
these items to be a part of the museum," due to open next year, which is
also the 60th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott.
"She was
just an extraordinary figure that any student of American history, not
African-American history, any student of American history should know
and be aware of," Ellis said.
Steele, wearing a lapel button that
read, "I (heart) Rosa Parks," said the fact that Parks’ belongings are
stuck in court-ordered limbo is "very heartbreaking," because it has
taken away a powerful learning tool.
"If you see something of Dr.
King’s or President Lincoln, Malcom X, it’s quite special. ‘Wow. These
were their personal things,’" Steele said. "That means quite a bit."
___
Associated
Press Associated Press videojournalist Bonny Ghosh in New York and
reporter Mike Householder in Detroit contributed to this report.
Follow Jesse J. Holland on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jessejholland

Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.

No posts to display