Rosa Parks Vs. Outkast: It’s All Good

A fascinating article in yesterday’s New York Times examines how Rosa Parks’ posthumous image has been abused by tacky profiteers and warring family factions (a dilemma that should sound familiar to music fans). It also has a few unexpectedly music-related items, noting that Parks likely had no clue that she’d even filed a $5 billion defamation suit against Outkast’s “Rosa Parks” single, and that even if she had, she never would have asked for such a huge sum; it also notes that Chevrolet paid six figures to use her image in that terrible, terrible John Mellencamp commercial.

But the strangest twist is near the end, regarding some sleazily opportunistic new price schemes regarding Parks’ expensive Detroit crypt:

For the seven crypts nearest to Mrs. Parks, which fetched $45,000 to $50,000 last year, prices were raised to $60,000. More than three dozen other crypts in the outer hall of the chapel were repriced at $24,275 each as of last April; they had been $17,000 to $20,000 before Mrs. Parks’s interment…One of the hallway crypts now belongs to Proof, the rap artist who was killed in a gunfight last spring.

Not be sound crass, but ever since reading this, we’ve had a charming, unshakeable image of Rosa up in heaven, politely but firmly asking her new neighbor to turn down that damn rapness.

Rosa Parks Won a Fight, but Left a Licensing Rift [NY Times]