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Cemetery Prices Jump After Parks Buried

DETROIT -- The price to get a spot in Detroit's Woodlawn cemetery has jumped thousands of dollars since civil rights icon Rosa Parks was entombed there last fall, angering some relatives who say it cheapens her legacy.

The spaces in 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.

Some of her relatives worry the prices might cheapen the legacy of the woman who began the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955. Parks died in October.

Parks' closest living relative, nephew William McCauley, said her burial was a"private matter, not a spectacle."