DETROIT (AP) — Hundreds of items that belonged to civil rights icon Rosa Parks and have been sitting unseen for years in a New York warehouse were sold to a foundation run by the son of billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett, the younger Buffett said Thursday. Hundreds of items that... (Associated Press) 
 
 Howard G. Buffett told The Associated Press that his foundation plans to give the items, which include Parks' Presidential Medal of Freedom, to an institute or museum he hasn't yet selected. She became an enduring symbol of the civil rights movement when she refused to cede her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white man. Buffett would not disclose the amount he paid for the items, but Steven Cohen, a lawyer for the seller, the Detroit-based Rosa & Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, said it was "consistent with the intrinsic value of the artifacts and their historical significance."
– One lucky museum will be getting a treasure trove in the form of hundreds of items belonging to civil rights icon Rosa Parks. A foundation run by Howard Buffett, son of Warren, has purchased the items—including a postcard from Martin Luther King Jr. and a hat Parks may have worn when she made history for refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama—and intends to donate them to a soon-to-be-chosen museum or institution. "I thought about doing what Rosa Parks would want," Buffett tells the AP. "I'm only trying to do one thing: preserve what's there for the public's benefit." The collection of more than 1,000 items also includes clothing, lamps, and Parks' Presidential Medal of Freedom. All have been gathering dust in a New York warehouse as family and friends battled over Parks' will. "I doubt that she would want to have her stuff sitting in a box with people fighting over them," says Buffett. He didn't disclose what he paid, but an attorney for Parks' heirs says the price was $4.5 million. In less-happy news, copper thieves this week ransacked the Alabama apartment where Parks lived, the AP reports separately.