Civil Rights Icon Rosa Parks' Intimate Letters Now Online: Video

DETROIT, MI – A collection of thousands of images and documents related to civil rights icon Rosa Parks, often referred to as the mother of the civil rights movement for her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL, bus to a white passenger 60 years ago, is available for the first time online as Black History Month draws to a close.

The Library of Congress announced Thursday that it had digitalized the Rosa Parks Collection, which contains 7,500 manuscripts and 2,500 photographs that chronicle her career as a civil rights activist, as well as aspects of her private life.

Her famous refusal to relinquish her seat on the segregated bus was a seminal moment in the civil rights movement, sparking a historic, 380-day African American boycott of the public bus service that eventually resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court decision desegregating Montgomery’s public transportation service.

“It’s a great privilege to open the Rosa Parks Collection and help people worldwide discover more about her active life and her deep commitment to civil rights and to children,” David Mao, acting librarian of Congress, said in a statement. “From the thoughtful reflections she left us in her own handwriting to her ‘Featherlite Pancakes’ recipe and smiling portraits, you’ll find much to explore in this collection about Mrs. Parks’ life beyond the bus.”

The bus itself is on permanent display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. Parks died in 2005 in Detroit, where she had lived since 1957. She was 92.

» Photo via The Henry Ford

The Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which paid $4.5 million for the Rosa Parks artifacts in 2014 after a dispute over ownership of the documents between the Parks family and the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development in Detroit, gave the letters, photos and other items to the Library of Congress on a 10-year loan.

In a video the library created about the collection, Howard Buffett said Parks “showed how much difference one person can make.”

“It’s important for our children to see that and to really embrace it and understand it,” he said. “Without getting this collection out of the boxes and out of the warehouse and in front of people, that wasn’t going to happen.”

The Library of Congress Rosa Parks Collection is available here. It includes correspondence between Parks and family members — her husband, Raymond A. Parks; her mother, Leona Edwards McCauley; and her brother, Sylvester McCauley, who convinced his sister to move to Detroit.

The bus boycott is a main topic in correspondence from 1955 to 1956, but the collection also encompasses Parks’ work with U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit; her participation in major civil rights events such as the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in 1957, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, Mississippi Freedom Project in 1964, and the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968; and her awards and honors bestowed on Parks, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal.

» Photo of Rosa Parks’ 1955 arrest on disorderly conduct charges via Wikimedia / Creative Commons