New insights into the life of civil rights icon Rosa Parks, right down to a recipe for pancakes and letters from classmates gossiping about boys, are casting a new light on a figure who once was controversial but now is considered one of America’s greatest heroes.

The Library of Congress plans to open a collection of 7,500 manuscripts and 2,500 photos that once belonged to Parks on Wednesday, which would have been her 102nd birthday; she died in 2005. The collection will include her handwritten notes, mementos, correspondence, and honors that have for many years sat collecting dust in warehouses in New York and Michigan, according to a USA Today report.

Parks is known for her extensive work in the civil rights movement, particularly for her defiant refusal to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 in favor of a white individual, helping spark a civil rights battle that would forever change the landscape of America. But the notes provide a different, more personal side of Parks, featuring prayers that were jotted down on slips of paper, or a recipe for featherlight pancakes.

There are, of course, much more serious subjects in them as well, including one in which she discusses Jim Crow laws in the South under which she grew up. She also talked about her seminal bus boycott. She even has a postcard from Rome that was sent to her by the one and only Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In one letter from 1956, she wrote to her mother than they were “really in the thick of it now,” noting that King’s home had been bombed while he was at a First Baptist Church meeting.

Many of the artifacts are of the mundane variety, including a random note that she had had dinner with future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, or a copy of a 1999 letter she sent to Pope John Paul II after their meeting.

Some provide interesting snippets into the oppression she had to deal with, including a poll tax receipt in the amount of $1.50 from 1957, which was part of Jim Crow laws that forced blacks to pay to use the voting booth.