The home of US civil rights icon Rosa Parks – rebuilt in Berlin by an artist – drew hundreds of people out to see it Saturday, the first time it was put on view.
The project, the idea of US artist Ryan Mendoza, was realized in his garden in the Berlin district of Wedding.
“It is wonderful how great the response has been to the house,” said Mendoza’s wife, Fabia, who was filming the event.
Rosa Parks, an African American, is best remembered for her refusal in 1955 to give her seat to a white person, a requirement in the then racially segregated state of Alabama. Her subsequent arrest for doing so incited a protest movement that would become a milestone in the struggle for equal rights for black people in the United States.
The Rosa Parks’ house project came about after long-time Berlin resident, Ryan Mendoza, saved the house in Detroit from demolition.
Parks lived in the house from 1957 to 1959, after she left Alabama because of public pressure, including death threats, for her role in the civil rights movement.
