Rosa Parks’ handwritten letter remembering “truly great man” Martin Luther King Jr is on sale for over $50,000.
She paid tribute to her fellow Civil Rights icon in a glowing note she sent to an autograph collector way back in 1979, reports say.
Parks – who rose to prominence for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man – wrote the letter eleven years after King’s assassination, according to TMZ.
She penned the piece in response to the autograph collector’s question about what Rosa thought of the inspirational I Have A Dream orator.
For the past 15 years, the letter remembering MLK has been in the collector’s hands – but now it’s on sale for $54,000.
Moments In Time is handling the sale of the coveted item, written in Parks’ elegant cursive.
In it, she wrote: “I admired and respected him as a truly great man committed and dedicated to freedom, peace and equality for all oppressed humanity.
“[He was] the leader of the masses in Montgomery, Alabama and the nation.
“A devoted husband, and father to his wife and children. A loving and loyal son to his parents.”
MLK was the brains behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was organized after Rosa was jailed for taking a stand against segregation.
She had violated the Alabama city’s racial segregation laws at the time.
Parks hailed the actions of King in the heartwarming letter, saying he was beloved by “all of us who were fortunate to know him.”
MLK was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968 and he died in hospital that day.
He was committed to non-violence to achieve the goal of ending racial segregation and inequality.
The clergyman’s quotes have featured widely on social media and protests signs in the wake of George Floyd‘s police custody death in Minneapolis.
Americans have taken to the streets in major US cities to decry systemic racism two month’s after the black man was killed by a white cop.
[MLK was] the leader of the masses in Montgomery, Alabama and the nation.
Rosa Parks
Former officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes on May 25, prompting peaceful protests, riots, and looting nationwide.
Last month, King’s son, Martin Luther King III, said his father would have understood why Black Lives Matter demonstrators resorted to violence.
King III said repeated cases of black people dying at the hands of the police would have tested his father’s belief in non-violence.
He told the BBC “based on the circumstances he would have said ‘I certainly understand what people feel they are going through’ – when you push people up into a corner at some point people will come out and react in ways that some people would say are not responsible.”
King III said he felt “great sadness and great frustration” that “George Floyd was murdered just a few days ago by police officers we all watched as he was crying for help”.
“And the people who are supposed to protect and serve did nothing other than allow one of their colleagues to continue to stand on his neck,” he said.
