Rosa Parks left almost all her estate to her institute, her 13 nieces and nephews contested the will, and a 2007 settlement gave them 20 percent

Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat. In 1999 she sued OutKast and its record labels over the 1998 song "Rosa Parks". On 12 May 2003 the Sixth Circuit revived her false advertising and publicity claims: "crying 'artist' does not confer carte blanche authority to appropriate a celebrity's name." The case settled in April 2005 for undisclosed cash and educational work with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. Parks died on 24 October 2005, aged 92, with no children. Her will of 22 July 1998 poured her property into a living trust signed the same day, with her friend Elaine Steele and Adam Shakoor as successor co-trustees, and she left almost all of her estate to the institute. In April 2006 her 13 nieces and nephews objected to the will, alleging that Steele had exerted undue influence. Steele's lawyers said Parks wished her legacy to continue through the institute. The court appointed 2 fiduciaries, who found $372,624 in bank accounts, and had the auction house Guernsey's catalogue her possessions. A settlement dated 16 February 2007, days before trial, was approved on 12 March 2007. Probate Judge Freddie Burton later cut Steele and the institute out after a complaint that they breached its confidentiality. On 29 December 2011 the Michigan Supreme Court reversed him and ordered Steele and Shakoor reinstated. A January 2012 filing made the terms public: 80 percent to Steele and the institute, 20 percent to the relatives. In August 2014 the Howard G. Buffett Foundation bought the archive for an undisclosed price and lent it to the Library of Congress, which opened it to researchers in February 2015. On 4 January 2016 the Eleventh Circuit upheld the dismissal of the institute's suit against Target over books and a plaque about Parks. The archive became a gift to the Library of Congress in 2016.