By Farrah Karapetian

On April 8, 2017, Rosa Parks’ home was unveiled to the German public. American ex-pat Ryan Mendoza moved it there and put it back together, without fetishizing its façade, in a garden behind a 1960s-era apartment building in a Berlin neighborhood called Wedding. Passersby can at times hear Parks’ voice recordings playing from within the house, and see the lights lit behind curtained windows; they can spend time in Mendoza’s family’s garden, although they cannot enter the house — partly due to liability, and also out of respect for Parks. Rhea McCauley, Ms. Parks’ niece, had not been able to find any other way to save the house from demolition, despite the iconicity of its former occupant. Parks’ actions inspired many in the Civil Rights Movement, but death threats forced her to leave Alabama for Detroit, and her life remained difficult, as evidenced by the condition of her house. The house is an unvarnished monument to a networked idea of individual agency in the battle for equality – and yet of course it broadcasts this notion in Germany, a country that has spent 70 years confronting its past and regulating neo-Nazi behavior. After the pro-Confederate, pro-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, Mendoza is trying to move the house back to the US. He is convinced that it should stand testament to Parks’ leadership as a balance to the preponderance of uncontextualized 20th century monuments to the failed Confederacy that remain in the American South. Continue reading →