Items owned by civil rights icon Rosa Parks were sold for a whopping $4.5 million Thursday according to the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Howard G. Buffett confirmed the deal but did not comment on the amount his foundation paid, but an attorney for Parks' heirs later confirmed the hundreds of items' price.

The more than 1,000 artifacts had remained in storage for years and include Parks' letters, furniture, clothing, Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal. Buffett said his foundation plans to have the items put on public display at an institute or museum.

The deal had been agreed upon earlier in the summer but reportedly only officially closed last week.

Lawyer for the Rosa & Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development Stephen Cohen said the pricing of these items was "consistent with the intrinsic value of the artifacts and their historical significance." The Institute was the seller in this transaction.

After the auction house receives a commission, 20 percent of the profits will go to Parks' relatives and the rest will be given to the Parks Institute, according to Lawrence Pepper.

"This property has been on the market since 2007," Pepper said to the Associated Press. "We had a few feelers from other places, but they were not in the range of what everybody felt was reasonable. The offer from the Buffett people was the first one that everybody agreed was reasonable...[The Buffetts] are going to do the right thing with it."

Parks died in 2005, after she became known as a pioneer in the civil rights movement in 1955 by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man while riding in Montgomery, Alabama. She later lived in Detroit where she worked for decades for U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. That bus is currently on display at The Henry Ford museum in Detroit.