Rosa Parks house going, going ... still not gone
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.
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.
Among the other items sold was Alex Haley’s manuscript of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” including notes by Malcolm X and Haley, which sold to New York’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Ettinger said.
Parks moved to Detroit in 1957, two years after refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala. She stayed for a time in her brother’s wood-framed home with 17 other relatives, according to family members.
The house eventually was abandoned and ended up on a demolition list before Parks’ niece, Rhea McCauley, bought it for $500 and donated it to American artist Ryan Mendoza in an attempt to preserve her aunt’s legacy. Mendoza took it apart and shipped it to Germany and reassembled it in Berlin, turning it into a work of art that became a destination for people curious about Parks.
Mendoza brought the house back to the U.S. this year and displayed it in Rhode Island as he searched for a permanent place to reassemble the fragile structure. It is now packed in shipping containers awaiting its new home.