Crypt Prices Raised at Cemetery Where Civil Rights Icon Rests
The price to get a spot in a chapel at Detroit’s Woodlawn Cemetery has jumped thousands of dollars since civil rights icon Rosa Parks was entombed there in the fall, a development that her closest living relative fears could cheapen her legacy.
Crypt spaces in what is now called the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel were priced at $17,000 before the cemetery gave spots, for free, to Parks, her husband and her mother. Now the spaces cost $24,275, and possibly as much as $65,000 for the slots nearest to Parks’ crypt.
William McCauley, her closest living relative, worries the prices might cheapen the legacy of his aunt, who refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955. Parks died in October. McCauley said her burial was a “private matter, not a spectacle.”
“When will people stop taking advantage of her legacy?” he told the Detroit Free Press.
Wade Reynolds, chief operating officer of Mikocem, the management company for Woodlawn and other cemeteries, said Parks was not being exploited.
The new prices will cover the cost of maintenance and improvements to the chapel, plus a reasonable profit, Reynolds said.
No crypts have been sold yet at the new prices.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
