FILE: Rosa Parks archive is sold to the Howard Buffett Foundation

Record ID: 402610

  • Title: FILE: Rosa Parks archive is sold to the Howard Buffett Foundation
  • Date: 29th August 2014
  • Summary: PHOTOGRAPH OF PARKS
  • Embargoed: 13th September 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: History,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAEZL9WEA7AWY66HQG5FJE770D4
  • Story Text: Thousands of personal items that once belonged to U.S. civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks have been sold to a foundation run by the son of billionaire Warren Buffett.
    Guernsey's Auctioneers President Arlan Ettinger confirmed to Reuters on Friday (August 29) that the Howard G. Buffett Foundation bought the collection and the sale was finalized a week ago.
    Ettinger would not disclose how much the foundation paid for the collection, but told Reuters in 2011 that he thought the entire archive could sell for at least $10 million (USD).
    Ettinger said the Howard G. Buffett Foundation does not plan to break up the collection and will seek to donate it to an institution or museum where it can be viewed by the American public.
    Guernsey's has been trying to find a buyer for the collection for the past eight years. For much of that time the 8,000 piece collection has been sitting in warehouse in New York.
    The Rosa Park collection includes many of her personal writings from the civil rights movement as well as her Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal of Honor. It also includes family Bibles, some that date back to 1850, school books, hats, reading glasses, and even a post card sent to Parks from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
    In 2005 Parks died at the age of 92.
    In 1955, Parks, a black seamstress, refused to give her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man. Her arrest sparked a 381 day bus boycott and thrust her into the center of the civil rights movement. Parks became known as "the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement". The next year the U.S. Supreme Court declared bus segregation to be unconstitutional.
  • Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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