A civil rights landmark that can’t seem to find a permanent home has taken up residence in the courtyard of the Royal Palace in Naples. The small Detroit house that was home to civil rights leader Rosa Parks, when death threats forced her to leave Montgomery, Alabama, is accompanied by exhibits about her life and the struggle.
In 2008, when the house was abandoned and due for demolition, it was bought for $500 by Parks’ niece, but efforts to raise money to restore it there failed, and the niece donated it to artist Ryan Mendoza, who had it dismantled and assembled for display at his Berlin studio, while continuing to try to find it a permanent home, saying he wants America to “remember a house it didn’t know it had forgotten.”
Mendoza draws connections between the house and the experience of many African-Americans who migrated to the north in the last century to escape poverty and racial oppression only to face redlining and other forms of discrimination. He’s hoping the Naples exhibit will help the house find a permanent home: “Potentially thanks to the showing of the house in this way, America will allow the house to have a home.”
