Rosa Parks’ house may be returned to US from Germany

By DAVID RISING

Associated Press

BERLIN

Section by section, American artist Ryan Mendoza painstakingly disassembled the small wood-frame home of civil rights icon Rosa Parks after learning that the struggling city of Detroit was going to have it demolished. He shipped it across the Atlantic Ocean and rebuilt it in the German capital of Berlin, saving the home and creating a new tourist attraction.

The house has been up in Berlin less than a year, but after violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., and the growing call to remove Confederate monuments in the United States, the New York native said it’s now clear to him that Parks’ house needs to return soon to the U.S.

“It’s actually become a necessity, as we see people rising up and seeing things for what they are,” he said. “As Americans begin to understand they have to re-contextualize these monuments, the Confederate statues, there is a lack of civil rights monuments to balance things out.”

Parks, who died in 2005, became a leading name in the civil rights movement for refusing in 1955 to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala. She moved to Detroit in 1957 to escape death threats and stayed in the house with her brother and his family – crammed into the tiny residence with more than 15 people.

After the financial crisis of 2008 and Detroit’s dramatic decline, Parks’ home was abandoned and put on a list for demolition. Parks’ niece Rhea McCauley instead bought it from the city for $500 and donated it to Mendoza for preservation.