Civil rights icon Rosa Parks spent more than 40 years living in her home state of Alabama before moving to Detroit, Michigan, in 1957. There, she briefly resided in a house owned by her brother, located at 2672 S. Deacon Street. While there’s some debate over how long Parks lived there, what’s certain is she spent a great deal of time at the house with her family. Despite the house’s historic significance, however, it was set to be demolished by the city until Rhea McCauley — Parks’ niece — purchased the home from city officials in 2014 for $500. McCauley then gifted the home to artist Ryan Mendoza, and thus began its whirlwind adventure around the world.
After trying and failing to convince the city of Detroit to preserve the building, Mendoza dismantled the home and relocated it to his art studio in Berlin, Germany, where it was rebuilt. The house returned to the U.S. in 2018 as part of the Rosa Parks House Project, an art installation that honored the legendary activist. It was then briefly exhibited in the WaterFire Arts Center in Providence, Rhode Island, before it was sent back overseas to Europe. In 2020, the house found its way to Naples, Italy, where it was displayed in the courtyard of the Royal Palace of Naples for several months as part of an art exhibit. While the future status of the home is currently unclear, Mendoza has repeatedly expressed hope for it to permanently return to the United States and be converted into a national monument.
Claudette Colvin refused to give up her bus seat before Rosa Patks
It’s impossible to deny the impact of Rosa Parks’ act of defiance, which acted as a major catalyst during the Civil Rights Movement. But she actually wasn’t the first Black woman to refuse to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama. Nine months earlier, on March 2, 1955, 15-year-old Claudette Colvinwas riding a bus home from school with three other Black classmates when the driver demanded they move to make room for white passengers. While Colvin’s friends obliged, she insisted it was her constitutional right to stay, and she stood her ground until she was forcibly removed from the bus and arrested. The NAACP considered using this event to challenge extant segregation laws, but worried Colvin’s teen pregnancy could potentially attract negative attention. However, Colvin later served as a plaintiff in the 1956 court case Browder v. Gayle, which established that Montgomery’s segregated bus system was indeed unconstitutional. Several other women who had also refused to give up their bus seats in Montgomery between Colvin and Parks, including Aurelia S. Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith, served as plaintiffs alongside Colvin.
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