It’s a piece of history that has become run-down and in danger of ruination. No more.
Rosa Parks’ childhood home has been obtained by Mobile historic preservationist Jerry Lathan. The Lathan Company has a plan to restore the historic farmhouse and open it as a museum. Details of the ultimate site of the home are expected to become final this year as plans are being made for it to be disassembled, moved and then re-assembled at the permanent site.
Plans are being negotiated to move it to a permanent site at nearby Tuskegee University, where Parks was born. Right now, the original home site is in Henry County near Abbeville, near the Georgia state line in southeast Alabama’s Wiregrass.
Rosa Parks was a key figure in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The seamstress was arrested when she declined to give up her seat to a white man on a downtown Montgomery bus. That action was a precursor to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was headed by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
One small action by Rosa Parks affected history. It started in Montgomery but spread nationally and internationally.
The home being preserved was where Rosa Parks lived until about age 5, when her parents separated, and she moved to Pine Level in southern Montgomery County.
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Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler writes about Alabama’s people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former Alabama Public Service Commissioner and State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at [email protected].
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