Today is a big day at the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Researchers and the public will finally have full access to civil rights icon Rosa Parks’ archive of letters, writings, personal notes and photographs, which go on display today for the first time.

Parks, who died in 2005 at 92, is beloved in American history for her civil disobedience on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. That defining moment, when she refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in 1955, triggered a year-long bus boycott that helped dismantle a system of segregation. The Rosa Parks’ collection will provide what experts call a more complex view of a woman – long recalled in history for one image – that of a nonviolent seamstress who inspired others to act at the dawning of the US civil rights era.