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Former Detroit home of Rosa Parks in line for historic district designation
A proposal is pending for the former Detroit home of Civil Rights Movement activists Rosa and Raymond Parks to be named a local historic district.
The Detroit City Council Planning and Economic Development Standing Committee will hold a public hearing to consider the proposal. The designation is intended to honor the flat in the 3200 block of Virginia Park Street where Civil Rights activists Rosa and Raymond Parks lived for 27 years.
"Their activism in Detroit helped shape the Civil Rights Movement," the Detroit Historic Designation Advisory Board said on its social media post.
A public hearing, which is part of the designation process, will begin at 10:35 a.m. June 26 at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center on Woodward Avenue.
Detroit's local historic districts are meant to be associated with people or events that are a significant part of Detroit's history, or have artistic or historical significance. Once a local historic district is established for a site, any exterior alterations to the building must go through the Historic District Commission.
Rosa Parks, who was already active in the Civil Rights Movement, became known for her refusal to follow the Jim Crow-era laws in Montgomery, Alabama. Specifically, she refused to give up her seat on a bus and move to the back of the vehicle on Dec. 1, 1955. Her arrest in that incident helped spark the Montgomery bus boycott.
After the boycott, Rosa and Raymond Parks moved to Hampton, Virginia, and then settled in Detroit. He died in 1977. She died in 2005.
