In an interview ahead of the opening, Mendoza said he hoped the grandeur of the Naples debut of “Almost Home” would draw attention to Parks’ legacy and help America “remember a house it didn’t know it had forgotten.”
Parks lived in the tiny house in Detroit with her brother and his family as she struggled to make a new life for herself in the northern U.S. after receiving death threats following the bus protest. The family says Parks, who died in 2005, lived there with 17 other relatives.
The house was abandoned and slated for demolition after the financial crisis in 2008 and Detroit’s dramatic decline, but Parks’ niece, Rhea McCauley, bought it from the city for $500 and donated it to Mendoza. After unsuccessful efforts to persuade the city to help save the building, Mendoza in 2016 dismantled it and moved it to the German capital, rebuilding it on the lot of his studio for public display.
In 2018, Brown University announced it would feature the house as part of a planned exhibition on the civil rights movement organized by its Center for Slavery and Justice. But it backed out at the last minute, citing a legal dispute with the family.
Earlier this year, Mendoza approached the Naples-based Morra Greco Foundation, where he had worked for a year in the 1990s. The Foundation agreed to help organize the exhibit with the backing of the Italian culture ministry and Campania regional government.
For Mendoza, the house epitomizes the experience of many African Americans who migrated north in the first half of the last century, only to face redlining and other discrimination that has affected generations of black Americans.
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