At the time, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. She had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for training activists for workers' rights and racial equality. She acted as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job as a seamstress in a local department store, and received death threats for years afterwards. Her situation also opened doors.

Shortly after the boycott, she moved to Detroit, where she briefly found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to John Conyers, an African-American U.S. Representative. She was also active in the Black Power movement and the support of political prisoners in the US.

After retirement, Parks wrote her autobiography and lived a largely private life in Detroit. In her final years, she suffered from dementia. Parks received national recognition, including the NAACP's 1979 Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and third non-U.S. government official to lie in honor at the Capitol Rotunda.

She ranks as one of the greatest civil rights icons of all time, all starting with a seemingly simple act of refusing to move from a bus seat. Rosa Parks passed away at age 92 in 2005, living in a modest apartment in Detroit, Michigan. Rosa Parks estate was modest too. Officially valued at $372, 624 in monetary terms, but of course priceless in terms of memories and historical significance.

Her final wishes were not so modest. She assigned all of her belongings to a charitable institute to “educate and motivate youth and adults, particularly African American persons, for self and community betterment.” She called this the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. She named her close friend, Elaine Steele, along with a retired Detroit judge, to oversee her estate. She also named Elaine Steele as a prominent beneficiary, including a 90% recipient of royalties, with 10% passing to her nieces and nephews.

But Parks’ many nieces and nephews did not agree with her final will and trust, which were created in July, 1998. They sued to challenge the estate plan, accusing Steele of using undue influence on Parks. Steele denied it. After the case was started, amid claims of mismanagement, the probate judge removed Steele and the other appointed executor and replaced them with two local attorneys.

On the eve of Rosa Parks estate trial, the parties settled with a confidential settlement agreement that upheld the will and trust as valid, re-instituted Steele and the retired Judge as the executors, and gave the nieces and nephews additional rights and royalties related to Parks. This left Steele in control of Rosa Parks’ Institute.

Because of the fight over Parks’ will, historians, students of the movement and the general public have had no access to items such as her photographs with presidents, her Congressional Gold Medal, a pillbox hat that she may have worn on the Montgomery bus, a signed postcard from King, decades of documents from civil rights meetings, and her ruminations about life in the South as a black woman.

Parks wanted people to see her mementos and learn from her life, said Elaine Steele, a longtime friend who heads the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, a foundation Parks co-founded in 1987 in Detroit.

“In my opinion, it was quite clear what she wanted,” Steele said.

Thankfully, on what would have been Parks’ 102 birthday earlier this year, 7,500 manuscripts, 2,500 photographs and other artifacts from Parks’ estate became available to researchers for the first time at the Library of Congress. The library is housing them on a 10-year-loan from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation who would eventually purchase the collection for $4.5 million last year (obviously about half the initial asking price). A portion of the artifacts are available to the public in the library’s Jefferson Building and several items also appear in the library’s civil rights exhibit.

According to Steven G. Cohen, who represents the Rosa & Raymond Parks Institute, the family dispute has been settled, stating: “I’m sure I speak for everyone involved: they’re thrilled with the disposition of the artifacts and the use made by them."