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