APNewsBreak: Buffett heir buys Rosa Parks archive

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

APNewsBreak: Buffett heir buys Rosa Parks archive

By MIKE HOUSEHOLDER and JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press | August 28, 2014 | Updated: August 29, 2014 12:45am

DETROIT (AP) — Hundreds of items that belonged to civil rights icon Rosa Parks and have been sitting unseen for years in a New York warehouse were sold to a foundation run by the son of billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett, the younger Buffett said Thursday.

Howard G. Buffett told The Associated Press that his foundation plans to give the items, which include Parks' Presidential Medal of Freedom, to an institute or museum he hasn't yet selected. Buffett said the items belong to the American people.

"I'm only trying to do one thing: preserve what's there for the public's benefit," he said. "I thought about doing what Rosa Parks would want. I doubt that she would want to have her stuff sitting in a box with people fighting over them."

A yearslong legal fight between Parks' heirs and her friends led to the memorabilia being removed from her Detroit home and offered up to the highest bidder.

Parks, who died in 2005 at age 92, was one of the most beloved women in U.S. history. She became an enduring symbol of the civil rights movement when she refused to cede her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man. That triggered a yearlong bus boycott that helped to dismantle officially sanctioned segregation and helped lift the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence.


Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/APNewsBreak-Buffett-heir-buys-Rosa-Parks-archive-5719663.php

[davidpdx]

1. Rosa Park never had children

I didn't know that.

This news article I dug up says it was her nieces and nephews that challenged the will sending it into probate court.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But a years-long legal fight between Parks’ heirs and her friends — a dispute similar to the court battle among Martin Luther King Jr.’s heirs — led to the memorabilia being taken away from her home city of Detroit and offered up to the highest bidder.

So far, no high bidder has emerged.

snip

Because of the fight over Parks’ will, historians, students of the movement and the general public have had no access to items such as her photographs with presidents, her Congressional Gold Medal, a pillbox hat that she may have worn on the Montgomery bus, a signed postcard from King, decades of documents from civil rights meetings, and her ruminations about life in the South as a black woman.

Parks wanted people to see her mementos and learn from her life, said Elaine Steele, a longtime friend who heads the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, a foundation Parks co-founded in Detroit in 1987.

“In my opinion, it was quite clear what she wanted,” Steele said.

Steele’s lawyer, Steven Cohen, said Parks’ heirs and the institute certainly could come to agreement on sending the artifacts to an appropriate institution “if we could close out the estate and get away from” the probate court. He said he hopes to resolve the matter in six months to a year.

“It will happen,” Cohen said. “But right now we’re hamstrung, because the probate court continues to want to monitor and control our activities. And it shouldn’t.”

Parks, who died in 2005 at age 92, stipulated in her will that the institute bearing her name receive a trove of personal correspondence, papers relating to her work for the Montgomery branch of the NAACP, tributes from presidents and world leaders, school books, family Bibles, clothing and furniture. Her nieces and nephews challenged her will, and her archives were seized by a court; a judge ordered it sold in one lump sale.

snip

Since 2006, Guernsey’s Auctioneers have kept Parks’ valuables in a New York warehouse, waiting for someone to offer the $8 million to $10 million asking price. By comparison, the city of Atlanta paid $32 million to King’s children for his papers, and the Henry Ford Museum paid $492,000 just for the bus aboard which Parks took her 1955 stand for civil rights.


Here are two links to the article just in case one doesn't work:

http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/local/2014/04/11/rosa-parks-archives-unavailable-public/7627015/

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/04/10/rosa-parks-archives-remain-unsold-warehouse/Q0hkBOmxZdVIN1taCfE6AJ/story.html

[raven mad]

2. I hope he donates them -

to the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery. And I thank him for preserving what could have been lost.

http://www.splcenter.org/civil-rights-memorial

[Chakab]

3. Buffet doesn't have heirs to his fortune.

He's given his children almost no support beyond a college education, and he plans on leaving his money to charity after his death.

[secondwind]

6. I believe Buffett is leaving each child 6 million "only"... same for Gates...

[Chakab]

9. That's news to me. I remember Buffett's son Peter being interviewed by Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks

several years back, and he claimed that he'd never been given any significant amount of money by his parents and that he and his siblings didn't expect an inheritance.

[handmade34]

4. reminds me...

when I was working in Alabama a couple years back, I visited the small Rosa Parks Library and Museum in Montgomery. It was slow and I was the only visitor, so they let me go into the normally guided tour by myself. First there is a great video presentation and then through a door into a mock setup of the bus and all the activities of the day Rosa Park's was arrested... it was beyond description (because I was alone and lost in the presentation) ....the sense of awe

well worth a visit while in the area...


http://www.troy.edu/rosaparks/

[MADem]

5. Great video--thanks for linking it. nt

[Plucketeer]

7. I was in Detroit in '07 with a day to spare

I decided to tour the Ford museum. I was unaware that THE Parks bus was on display here. A docent allowed me to sit in the same seat Rosa had. Was one of the high points of my life.

[KamaAina]

8. Warren or Jimmy?