The house Rosa Parks lived in for two years after moving to Detroit from Montgomery, Alabama has found a new home, in Berlin, where an artist who rescued it from destruction has opened it to visitors.
Parks, an early leader in the Civil Rights movement, left Alabama for Detroit after unceasing death threats and attacks, and shared the house originally on South Deacon Street with her brother and his family.
In recent years, the house had suffered from abandonment, floods and break-ins, and was on the city’s list to be demolished. Parks’ niece Rhea McCauley bought it for $500 but couldn’t raise funds to restore it. That’s when Ryan Mendoza, a U.S. artist living in Berlin got involved.
He bought the house, spent weeks disassembling it and crating the boards and parts, and then rebuilding it in his Berlin backyard. It’s actually the second Detroit house there; a previous one was moved as part of an art project probing themes of rootlessness and displacement.
McCauley will be in Berlin this week to join Mendoza, and his wife Fabia, at the opening. Fabia Mendoza, a filmmaker, has produced a documentary of the project.
