Rosa Parks' Letter Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. Up for Sale

Rosa Parks' handwritten letter remembering Martin Luther King Jr. as someone she admired and respected is going up for sale ... and as you'd expect, this kinda history won't be cheap.

Rosa honored her fellow Civil Rights icon in a letter she sent to an autograph collector way back in 1979 -- 11 years after MLK's assassination, and the high regard in which she held him is obvious.

The letter, a response to the autograph collector's question about what Rosa thought of MLK, has been sitting in a private collector's hands for the last 15 years, but now it's going up for sale through Moments In Time ... and being sold for a cool $54,000.

Rosa wrote in cursive ('memba that) ... "I admired and respected him as a truly great man committed and dedicated to freedom, peace and equality for all oppressed humanity."

She also remembered MLK as "the leader of the masses in Montgomery, Alabama and the nation ... a devoted husband, and father to his wife and children. A loving and loyal son to his parents."

MLK famously organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott after Rosa was thrown in jail for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man -- a violation of the city’s racial segregation laws.