A rare handwritten note by civil rights icon Rosa Parks about how the Ku Klux Klan bombed a neighbor’s home in 1957 in Montgomery will move back to the “City of Dreams.”

The note will be transferred from the rarefied vault of an international auction house on Manhattan’s upper East Side to a climate-controlled enclosure in Alabama State University’s (ASU) archives, thanks to a Montgomery family who lived in the house mentioned in Parks’ note.

Rosa Parks’ note sold at auction to the Graetz family. (Courtesy of Guernsey’s, New York)

The family who bought the 1957 note last Friday from New York City’s Guernsey’s Auction for $9,375 is led by the Rev. Robert (Bob) and Jeannie Graetz, whose home at Mill Street and Cleveland Avenue in Montgomery was bombed by the KKK in the early morning of Jan. 10, 1957. Parks vividly described the bombing in her note.

The Graetzes are known as pioneers in Alabama’s civil rights movement, and since retiring from the Lutheran clergy serve as advisers and consultants with ASU’s National Center for the Study of Civil Rights and African-American Culture.

“The house that Rosa Parks describes as bombed in the note that we bought at auction was our own home, which was the parsonage of the Trinity Lutheran Church where my husband served as its minister and I served as its first lady,” Jeannie Graetz said.

Parks’ note is an account of the second bombing of their home by the KKK. It was first bombed by the hate group on Aug. 25, 1956. No one was seriously hurt then or in the 1957 bombing.

The Graetzes believe that they were on the Klan’s “hit list” because they were among the only local white clergy who openly supported the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott began after Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery city bus to a white passenger on Dec. 1, 1955, which led to her arrest.

Historians refer to Parks’ arrest and what occurred because of it as the birth of the modern civil rights movement in the United States.

“We raised the ire of the local Klan as soon as we moved to Montgomery because we are a white couple, and my husband was the minister of an all-black Lutheran congregation,” Jeannie Graetz said. “We also chose to live among our flock, and then we publicly supported the desegregation of Montgomery’s buses beginning in 1955. Because of those reasons, we were marked targets.”

The Graetz home after a bombing by the Ku Klux Klan. (“A White Preacher’s Message on Race and Reconciliation,” by Robert S. Graetz Jr./Courtesy of NewSouth Books)

Bombing memories

Jeannie Graetz said that when the KKK’s dynamite bomb went off, the entire family was home, which included her husband, her husband’s mother and their four young children – the youngest their 9-day-old infant.

The Rev. Bob Graetz with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (“A White Preacher’s Message on Race and Reconciliation,” by Robert S. Graetz Jr./Courtesy of NewSouth Books)

“When the bomb detonated at 2 a.m., it blew our roof completely off of the home, as well as all of the doors; it shattered every one of the windows and did considerable other damage to the rest of our house,” Jeannie Graetz said. “Our neighbors included Mr. and Mrs. Parks, who lived across the street, and they were our close friends. After the bombing, they helped us clean and pick up. It was a miracle that no one was killed or severely injured.”

Jeannie Graetz remembered that other locations were also bombed in Montgomery on that same evening.

“The same night that our home was bombed, four black churches were also bombed by the KKK in Montgomery, as well as the home of Rev. Ralph and Juanita Abernathy. Several men were arrested by law enforcement for these bombings and placed on trial, but the all-white local juries of that era found them all innocent,” she said.

Bob Graetz said that a friend told the couple about the handwritten Parks note a few weeks ago, and that is when his family had the “eureka” moment to buy it, bring it back home to Montgomery and give it to Alabama State University’s archives.

“My wife and all seven of our children chipped in to help us purchase this piece of history, and it has been a joy and a blessing to all of us to soon bring this back home,” the 90-year-old civil rights foot soldier said.

Arlan Ettinger, the president of New York’s Guernseys Auctions, said the account of the Graetz family purchasing the Parks note is a wonderful story.

“As the president of an internationally acclaimed auction house, we’ve presided over many unique and meaningful auctions, from the Titanic relics to Princess Diana’s jewelry … but this story is an extremely wonderful story,” Ettinger said.

“When I heard about the Graetz family’s full-circle story concerning the Rosa Parks letter, I thought how wonderful and fabulous it was for this most meaningful thing to occur at our auction house. What’s not to love about this occurrence?” he said.

The decision to donate

The Graetzes said they felt from the beginning that Parks’ note belonged at ASU because of its long and historic association with Parks, who attended school on campus, as did many other civil rights movement leaders, including the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, attorney Fred Gray, Jo Ann Robinson, Selma’s F.D. Reese, Thelma Glass, Birmingham’s the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and so many more.

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after being arrested for boycotting public transportation, Montgomery, Alabama, February, 1956. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division)

“Bob and I just love ASU. It is a part of us and its employees and students are just like our family,” Jeannie Graetz said.

The ASU dean who oversees the university’s archives is Dr. Janice Franklin. She said the university is gratified the Graetz family pooled their resources and purchased this rare civil rights artifact for ASU.

She said the Parks note belongs in Montgomery and specifically at Alabama State University because of the university’s close association with the civil rights movement.

“We who work at Alabama State University’s archives are overjoyed because this will allow us to preserve and share this important document with the public and scholars alike,” Franklin said.

The note is a rare find that speaks to the struggles and the suffering the Graetz family endured, she said, as did so many others who stood up against hatred, segregation and the evils of Jim Crow and KKK injustice.

“Thank God for Rev. and Mrs. Graetz and this letter written by Mrs. Parks, which attests to all that the Graetz family went through so that freedom and equality could be enjoyed by all of God’s children, despite the color of their skin,” Franklin said.