Rosa Parks Memorabilia To Be Part Of Temporary Collection At Library Of Congress
DETROIT (WWJ/AP) - Hundreds of items from the civil rights figure Rosa Parks that were long kept hidden away in a warehouse will have a new home at the Library of Congress for the next 10 years.
Library officials have announced that Howard Buffett, the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, is loaning the entire collection to the world's largest library.
The collection includes about 1,500 items, including Parks' personal correspondence and photographs, letters from presidents and her Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal.
A yearslong legal fight between Parks' heirs and her friends led to the memorabilia being removed from her Detroit home and offered up to the highest bidder.
Parks, who died in 2005 at age 92, was one of the most beloved women in U.S. history. She became an enduring symbol of the civil rights movement when she refused to cede her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man. That triggered a yearlong bus boycott that helped to dismantle officially sanctioned segregation and helped lift the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence.
Because of the fight over Parks' will, historians, students of the movement and the general public have had no access to the items some of which will be shown in a 2015 exhibit.
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