Rosa Parks' legend lives on in so many ways.
Now, Howard Buffett, son of billionaire Warren Buffett, has stepped in to make sure hundreds of her belongings -- including the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- can be shared with the public. Buffett has not yet decided which institute will receive the items.
Bill Laitner of the Detroit Free Press reports that Howard Buffett's foundation has bought the item that have been sitting in warehouses in Detroit and New York and will be put on public display for all to see.
“I’m only trying to do one thing: preserve what’s there for the public’s benefit,” Howard Buffett said. “I thought about doing what Rosa Parks would want. I doubt that she would want to have her stuff sitting in a box with people fighting over them.”
Laitner writes:
A years-long legal fight between Parks’ heirs and her friends led to the memorabilia being removed from her Detroit home and offered up to the highest bidder, said Farmington Hills lawyer Steve Cohen, who represented the educational institute that Parks founded and that lives on in modest offices in downtown Detroit.
“These artifacts were things that Mrs. Parks had originally given to her institute. She started this institute 30 years ago and she gave her entire modest estate to the institute,” as directed by her will, Cohen said. Court challenges have tied up the artifacts ever since, he said.
