The word around town is that Rosa Parks’ family is not happy that Proof, the recently slain rapper and Eminem’s best friend, is buried in the same chapel cemetery as Parks.

William McCauley, Parks’ nephew, told the Detroit Free Press, “I don’t see the appropriateness of someone like this young rapper being buried with Rosa Parks. She was a person of nonviolence and obviously this young rapper had a different creed when it comes to resolving issues.” Lawrence Pepper, Parks’ attorney, added “I don’t think his music is anything like Mrs. Parks. To me, it’s disrespect to Rosa Parks.”

Wow.

Of course, this isn’t Parks’ first run-in with the hip-hop world. Before her death, Parks sued Outkast for their 1999 song “Rosa Parks,” which she says used her name without permission. Although the suit was dismissed, a second suit was filed and settled in 2004.

Like the Outkast situation, which I believe was instigated by Parks’ family and not the Civil Rights icon, this seems to be another example of the kind of inter-generational warfare that undermines our community. Of course, Proof and Rosa Parks are not moral equivalents. But when did that become the litmus test for a dignified burial?

I understand that the chapel cemetary, which was recently renamed after Parks, isn’t the only place to received such a burial. Still, I can’t help but think that having these two buried in the same place might signify something powerful for a generation of young people who feel aliented by the very generation whose moral and civic legacy they are trying to replicate.