From Rosa Parks
Author: Parks, Rosa
Date: April 19, 1961
Location: Detroit, Mich.
Genre: Letter
Details
Parks, who relocated to Detroit in 1957 with her husband, Raymond, thanks King for a gift of twenty dollars. She also updates him on the status of her family’s health.1
Dear Dr. and Mrs. King:
I am sorry that it has taken me such a long time to write my thanks for your generous gift of $20.00 when you were here.2
I mislaid the card while looking up your address, and I kept putting off writing.
We arg are keeping up very well inspite of poor health and other problems.3
My family joins me in wishing the best of health, happiness and success for you and yours.
Sincerely yours,
[signed] Rosa Parks
1. Rosa Parks (1913–2005). King’s gift may have been a contribution to a fundraising campaign to ease Parks’s financial troubles. For more on King’s efforts to assist Parks financially, see Parks to King, 14 March 1960, in Papers 5:389.
2. King was in Detroit multiple times, first on 21 August 1960 and again 6–7 March 1961. It is uncertain during which visit King and Parks saw each other.
3. The Parks’s family suffered from medical problems: Raymond caught pneumonia in July 1958 and was unemployed from January to August 1959, while Rosa Parks was hospitalized for stomach ulcers and a throat tumor, which resulted in a $560 medical bill (Alex Poinsett, “The Troubles of Bus Boycott’s Forgotten Woman,” Jet, 14 July 1960, pp. 12–15).
Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954–1968, Boston University, Boston, Mass.