Rosa Parks' Detroit Home Is Now Up for Auction
Civil rights icon Rosa Parks is most famous for helping spark the bus boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama, but she actually spent more of her life in Detroit, Michigan. Parks moved there in 1957 with her husband Raymond, fleeing the unemployment, ostracism and death threats she received for her activism.
More than 60 years later, the Detroit home where she lived is enjoying a surprisingly rich afterlife. ... in 2014, Parks’ niece Rhea McCauley purchased the crumbling residence for $500. She was determined to save the house from demolition and sought out investors willing to help her transform it into a memorial or museum, but found little success until 2016, when American artist Ryan Mendoza joined the project. Mendoza salvaged parts from the activist’s former home and reassembled them into a unique art installation that has since been displayed in Berlin and at Providence’s Rhode Island School of Design.
Now, the house is disassembled and back on the market, and this time, it won’t be selling for a paltry $500. Victoria Stapley-Brown of The Art Newspaper writes that the structure is one of the centerpieces of African American Historic & Cultural Treasures, a 700-lot, two-day sale currently being held by New York auction house Guernsey’s. Bidding on lot 584, entitled “The Rosa Parks Family Home,” opens this afternoon and is expected to reach between $1 and $3 million. Guernsey’s president, Arlan Ettinger, told The Art Newspaper that the auction house hopes that the winning bidder is a museum or institution that will display the house for the public.
According to the lot’s description, Parks’ time in Detroit, which she later called “the Northern promised land that wasn’t,” found her out of work and effectively destitute. She spent her days fruitlessly searching for a job while contributing to the management of the overcrowded household, often cooking blueberry cobbler and baked chicken. Although Parks was able to secure temporary positions, she only found steady employment in 1965, when she began working as an administrative aide for Detroit Congressman John Conyers, Jr. Parks held this role until her 1985 retirement, according to History.com, and remained a fierce advocate of civil rights throughout her lifetime. Over the years, she moved to various residences around Detroit, but in 2005, she died at age 92 without ever having owned her own property.
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/rosa-parks-detroit-home-now-auction-180969763/#JqlXAYjvQ2GDyXpV.99
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- Rosa Parks house has possible buyers following auction- Chicago Sun Times, July 26, 2018, 5:32 PM
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The auctioneer selling the house where Rosa Parks sought refuge after fleeing the South amid death threats said after the auction Thursday there are buyers interested, but it will take a few days to work out the details.
The house was included in an auction by Guernsey’s in New York as part of a larger sale of African-American cultural and historic items. It was listed with a minimum bid of $1 million, with a presale estimate of $1 million to $3 million.
It didn’t sell during the auction, but Arlan Ettinger, of Guernsey’s, said he was approached after the auction by a buyer who had trouble entering a bid online. He did not release the buyer’s identity.
Among the other items of interest that sold was Alex Haley’s manuscript of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” including handwritten notes by Malcolm X and Haley, which sold to New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Ettinger said. It was sold after the auction, and he did not immediately release the price.
‘No baseball, no guitar as important’ as Rosa Parks family home, auctioneer says.
Parks moved to Detroit in 1957, two years after refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. She stayed for a time in her brother’s tiny, wood-framed home with 17 other relatives, according to family members.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/rosa-parks-house-auction-alex-haley-malcolm-x/
https://wtop.com/national/2018/07/house-where-rosa-parks-sought-refuge-set-for-auction/
April 1, 2018 file photo, visitors view the rebuilt house of Rosa Parks at the WaterFire Arts Center in Providence, R.I. The house where Parks sought refuge in Detroit after fleeing the South will be auctioned on Thursday, July 26 in New York.
