Rosa Parks is a Civil Rights icon and there are thousands of photographs of here circling the internet, whether refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus or her mugshot that followed.
The world thought they had seen it all, until native Detroiter Chandler Cosey uploaded a never-before-seen photo on Twitter from 1996 of Parks holding him as a child.
Lil Chan vs Big Chan pic.twitter.com/P0BltGh8l6
— Chan Cozy (@chnczy) November 19, 2019
The Twitter-world went crazy, retweeting and liking Cosey’s picture, and questioning if it was authentic.
“It’s very real,” Cosey said during a phone interview with the Michigan Chronicle. “A lot of people have been asking me if it was photoshopped, but it’s real.”
Cosey, 24, uploaded the photo along with his current photo, participating in a challenge on Twitter where you upload a baby photo and a current option. Cosey clearly won the challenge.
“I saw some friends of mine on my timeline playing and I wanted to play,” said Cosey. “So I scrolled through my phone to find a good baby photo and that was the first one that actually popped up. I thought it would get a little bit of buzz because it was Rosa Parks, but I didn’t expect for it to go this crazy.”
To date, the tweet has over 11,600 retweets and almost 80,000 likes. It has been featured on Twitter’s “Trending” page, Reddit and other publications. Cosey even said he has done a couple of radio interviews about the photo.
Cosey said Parks is a close cousin of his and the picture was taken at a Civil Rights event in Detroit. Cosey said his grandfather, Thomas Cosey, and Parks are first cousins. He said he does not remember much about that day, but he does remember seeing her at family reunions, visiting her Detroit riverfront apartment, and he attended her funeral in Detroit in 2005.
He also provided another photo of Parks holding him at a Michael E. Fletcher gospel concert in Detroit that was in a 1996 Detroit News article:
Parks rose to prominence during the Civil Rights movement and then moved to Detroit in the late 1950s, where she stayed for the remainder of her life. She worked many years for late Congressman John Conyers Jr. Parks passed way October 24, 2005 at the age of 92 in Detroit.
COVER PHOTO: Chandler Cozy
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