RESCUED ROSA PARKS HOUSE DUE TO RETURN FROM GERMANY

PROVIDENCE, R.I. The house where Rosa Parks lived after sparking the Montgomery bus boycott was on a demolition list in Detroit until it was saved by Parks’ niece and a Berlin-based artist, who moved it to Germany and reassembled it in his yard.

Now, it’s set to be returned to the United States and displayed for three months in Rhode Island. It’s a move the artist, Ryan Mendoza, and Parks’ family say is necessary at a time that racial justice is at the centre of the American conversation.

“Auntie Rosa was an American hero, and we shouldn’t have to have other countries acknowledge our heroes for us,” said Parks’ niece, Rhea McCauley. “It’s a step in the right direction.”

Mendoza is working on the project with Brown University. The plan is to bring the two-storey wooden house to the U.S. early next year and reassemble it in Providence. It would be displayed from March through May.

Parks moved to Detroit in 1957, two years after she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala. She lived in the home with her brother and his family, including McCauley.

Parks died in 2005. When the house ended up on the demolition list because it was abandoned,

McCauley paid $500 to buy it and then donated it to Mendoza, an American who has done other art projects in Detroit, and lived and worked in Europe for years.

He moved it to Berlin in 2016.

MARKUS SCHREIBER / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Rhea McCauley, niece of Rosa Parks, poses in front of the rebuilt house of the late civil rights activist in Berlin, Germany. Parks’ house, originally located in Detroit, will be temporarily relocated again to Providence, R.I.