In a 2011 post, "Civil Rights Matters," the blog noted that, because of a legal dispute, the papers of Rosa Parks--the "mother of the civil rights movement"--sat in warehouses in Detroit, unavailable to scholars or the public. That situation has changed dramatically, thanks to the philanthropist Howard Buffet. Buffet, who says the papers "belong to all Americans," purchased the documents and loaned them to the Library of Congress.This past week the Library of Congress opened the Rosa Parks archives to scholars and the public. The array of archival documents reportedly reveal Parks's "fury" about segregation and an "aggressive" edge. Much more than the stoic protester captured in photos of her famous 1955 protest against bus segregation, Parks was a complicated icon.
You can read more about the opening of the Parks' papers here and hear NPR's take on it here. The Library of Congress guide to the Parks' archives is available here.
