Rosa Parks crypt inflates grave sites in Detroit

Death, it is said, is the ultimate equaliser - except, it would seem, when that equality comes up against proximity in eternity to the earthly remains of one of the icons of America's civil rights movement.

Rosa Parks, the Alabama seamstress venerated for her refusal in 1955 to surrender her seat on a bus to a white person, died last November and is buried at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery, where other members of the city's elite, including the Ford and Dodge automobile dynasties, and the family of Tamla-Motown superstar Diana Ross, already lie.

Ms Parks' arrival however has led to a 30 per cent-plus surge in the prices of close-by crypts.

Before last November, those nearest to where she is buried cost US$45,000.

Now they cost US$60,000.

Those further away, but still in the Rosa L.Parks Freedom Chapel, have seen their cost rise from US$17,000 to over US$24,000.

The cemetery hotly denies that the price rises are an attempt to cash in on the celebrity of Ms Parks, insisting that it merely reflects the need to redecorate and improve security at the chapel, and cover the cost of three crypts donated to the Parks family.

But these latter are not convinced.

"We are totally blown away," her nephew William Patrick McCauley told the New York Times.

"It's very upsetting to us that she's being taken advantage of in her death, and we're not being consulted.

No-one's contactedus about anything." The basic price of a crypt at Woodlawn is US$3,600.

A spot in the mausoleum where the soul singer Aretha Franklin's family is buried costs US$9,000.

Mikocem, the company that runs Woodlawn, said it had no plans for an upgrade when Ms Franklin herself is laid to rest there.

By contrast, it had spent US$4m on renovating the Parks chapel, and other expenses connected with her death.

- INDEPENDENT