December 6, 2004

Cool and strange

You may know the name Rosa Parks -- she was the woman who would not sit in the "black section" of the city bus in 1955 -- she had finished shopping, had a couple bags of groceries and was tired and didn't feel like walking back to the rear of the bus... Busted, into the history books and race relations moves forward a biiiiig step. Fast forward to today -- she is living in an apartment in Detroit where the rent is $1,800 per month (strange) but since she is suffering from old age and issues with dementia, the landlord has said that they will null out the rent and let her live for free until she passes. (cool) CNN has the story here: bq. Rosa Parks' landlord has offered to let her stay in her apartment rent-free, two years after threatening to evict her when the owners said her caretakers missed rental payments. bq. Parks' doctors say the 91-year-old civil rights pioneer has dementia and is in poor health. Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit had been paying Parks' rent, which had been as high as $1,800 a month, since August 2003, the Rev. Charles Adams said. bq. "We did not want her set out in the street," Adams said. "We didn't want to make a big noise out of it. ... It was a simple act of kindness." bq. In an October letter, Riverfront Associates, which owns the apartment where Parks has lived since 1994, said she could stay for free for the rest of her life. Very cool! Posted by DaveH at December 6, 2004 11:35 PM