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Rosa Parks's Entire Estate On The NYC Auction Block
By
Jen Carlson
Published Jul 29, 2011
Modified Jul 29, 2011
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Jul 29, 2011
Modified Jul 29, 2011
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There are some interesting, and very private, items on the auction block at Guernsey's, belonging to the mother of the Civil Rights movement, Rosa Parks.
Parks died in 2005, and over the past six years there has been plenty of debate over her estate. Steven Cohen, who represents the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, is fighting to get the memorabilia back, and says "the court system of her adopted city has embarked on a course to destroy her legacy, bankrupt her institute, shred her estate plan and steal her very name." The courts selected Guernsey's Auctioneers to find an institution to buy and preserve the complete archive.
So now Guernsey's Auctioneers, located here in New York, is offering up the memorabilia—which includes everything from a postcard from Martin Luther King, Jr. to a pancake recipe to a handwritten, detailed account of Parks's neighbor attempting to rape her in 1931. (It's unclear if the account is from a journal, or if Parks meant for it to be read by the public.)
The auction house noted that the the only thing missing from their lot is the bus itself. The entire lot is being sold as a single collection (likely around the $10 million mark), which has taken The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research library of the New York Public Library, out of the running since they can only afford a few items.
Tagged
auction
Guernseys
Rosa Parks
Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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