Rosa Parks' house may be returned to US from Germany
Source: Associated Press
David Rising, Associated Press
Updated 6:21 pm, Friday, August 25, 2017
BERLIN (AP) — 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, Virginia, 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, Alabama. 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.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/Rosa-Parks-house-may-be-returned-to-US-from-11957571.php
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Remember the outrage from some when our President visited "the bus"? This was a man who suffered extreme animosity and hatred, and even the act of honoring Parks was seen by some as inflammatory. The man couldn't give a single speech mentioning racial tensions without a swift backlash from the right. Our country has reaped the harvest of Obama hate with the election of Trump. Regardless of the legitimacy of the election, Trumps ascent has served as an affirmation of every single racist asshole's world view in this country. Trump has done nothing but fan those flames of bigotry and hatred! So yes, I applaud this gentleman's sencerity in wanting to return our history to us, but at this present moment, I think some would do exactly what you described.
