LAST FAREWELL TO THE WHOMAN WHO CHANGED HISTORY

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Da cnn.com:

Mourners pay tribute to Rosa Parks

Clinton recalls being inspired by civil rights pioneer

DETROIT, Michigan (CNN) -- Senators, African-American leaders and students both black and white packed a Detroit church Wednesday for an emotional tribute to civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

After the service at Detroit's Greater Grace Temple Church, Parks was to be laid to rest in the city where she died last week at age 92.

She became a symbol of the struggle for civil rights after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man 50 years ago in Montgomery, Alabama.

That action set in motion a battle that helped spark the modern civil rights movement and went to the Supreme Court, which struck down the city's Jim Crow ordinance requiring bus segregation a year later.

Former President Bill Clinton, who honored Parks with a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, recalled being inspired by her action. (Watch: How Parks inspired Clinton -- 7:25)

"I was a 9-year-old Southern white boy who rode a segregated bus every single day of my life," Clinton told those gathered at the church.

"When Rosa showed us that black folks didn't have to sit in the back anymore, two of my friends and I who strongly approved of what she had done decided we didn't have to sit in the front anymore."

He called it "a tiny gesture by three ordinary kids," but said the gesture was repeated throughout the civil rights struggle, "proving that she did help to set us all free."

The ceremony, which began at 11 a.m. ET and lasted well into the afternoon, was marked by lively gospel songs, passionate sermons and reflections on Parks' importance from U.S. politicians, including Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Kerry.

Nearly four hours into the service, soul singer Aretha Franklin performed a gospel tribute to Parks, which brought many to their feet. Black religious leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Bishop T.D. Jakes, also were scheduled to speak.

In his tribute, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, 84, took a swipe at President Bush for not honoring Parks when he nominated conservative Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court on Monday. (Full story)

"The president of these United States engaged in ceremony in the rotunda, but he stopped short of sacrament when he missed an opportunity to name somebody to the courts with the spirit of Rosa Parks, with diversity and minority rights," Lowery said, referring to Bush's visit to Parks' body as she lay in honor in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.

Lowery said that at Saturday's memorial service in Montgomery he spoke to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whom he referred to as the "old homegirl from Alabama," and urged her to act on Parks' memory and push for extension of the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years.

Throughout the service, Parks was remembered as a small lady who made an enormous contribution to U.S. history.

"I think the important message today is that an ordinary person -- a quiet, humble person -- can ignite a movement," said National Urban League President Marc Morial before the service.

Bush ordered the U.S. flag to be flown at half staff Wednesday in remembrance of Parks.

Residents of Detroit also paid their respects at the city's Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, where Parks lay in repose before Wednesday's service.

On December 1, 1955, Parks -- a 42-year-old seamstress -- refused to give up her bus seat and was arrested. (Watch: Schoolchildren reenact Parks' protest -- 1:41)

"I only knew that [as] I was being arrested it was the last time I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind," Parks recalled in 1999.

Her action triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system by blacks that was organized by a 26-year-old Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The boycott ended after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that Montgomery's segregated bus service was unconstitutional. But it wasn't until the 1964 Civil Rights Act that all public accommodations nationwide were desegregated.

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Da Nytimes.com:

Thousands Pay Final Respects to Rosa Parks in Detroit

By MARIA NEWMAN
Published: November 2, 2005

Rosa Parks, the unassuming seamstress whose small act of defiance on a city bus 50 years ago helped spark the modern civil rights movement, was to be laid to rest today in Detroit after a lavish funeral service attended by thousands of dignitaries and ordinary people.

Beginning at dawn, people began lining up around the cavernous Greater Grace Temple, in Mrs. Park's adopted hometown, and hours later the line still wrapped around two blocks.

"The world knows of Rosa Parks because of a simple single act of dignity and courage that struck a lethal blow to the foundations of legal bigotry," said former President Bill Clinton, who spoke early in a nearly six-hour service that featured rousing words in tributes and songs.

When Mrs. Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, "in a region where gentlemen are supposed to give up their seats for ladies," he said, "she was just taking the next step on her own road to freedom."

In doing so, Mr. Clinton said, she "ignited the most significant social movement in modern American history."

Mr. Clinton noted that Mrs. Parks was a petite woman, and said it brought to his mind Abraham Lincoln's remark upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

"So this is the little lady who started the great war," Mr. Clinton quoted Mr. Lincoln as saying.

"This time Rosa's war was fought by Martin Luther King's rules, civil disobedience, peaceful resistance," Mr. Clinton said. "But a war nonetheless for one America in which the law of the land means the same thing for everybody."

The service also featured remarks by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and singing by Aretha Franklin. In attendance were former President Jimmy Carter, Winnie Mandela, the ex-wife of South Africa's post-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, and several senators and members of Congress.

As the crowd of 4,000 held hands and sang out the Lord's Prayer and "We Shall Overcome," family members filed past the casket before it was closed.

"Mother Parks, take your rest. You have certainly earned it," Bishop Charles Ellis III of Greater Grace Temple said.

Mrs. Parks died Oct. 24 at the age of 92. She was born in Tuskegee, Ala., and attended rural segregated schools until she was 11 years old. It was not until she was 21 that she earned a high school diploma.

By the time the 1940's and 50's rolled around, Mrs. Parks was one of the legions of African Americans simmering with frustration about Jim Crow segregation laws and who had been schooling themselves in ways that they could bring about change.

Mrs. Parks registered to vote at the age of 33, after two unsuccessful attempts in which she was told she had failed a literacy test. She was a member of the N.A.A.C.P. at a time when there had already been attempts to desegregate Montgomery's buses, where blacks had to give up their seats for whites and sit in the back.

For several years, Mrs. Parks had taken to entering the bus from the front, even though drivers insisted blacks enter through the back. On Dec. 1, 1955, on her way home from her job as a seamstress at a department store, she boarded her usual Cleveland Avenue bus to go home, through the front, angering a driver who had already tangled with her in the past about her practice.

When the whites-only section filled, the driver told her she had to vacate her seat. Mrs. Parks refused, and the police were called. She was arrested.

Her defiance led to a yearlong bus boycott in Montgomery led by the Rev. Dr. King, and a Supreme Court decision against that city's bus segregation that led to nationwide nonviolent protests against racial segregation.

"Her greatness lay in what everybody could do, but everybody doesn't," Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan said during the service.

"By your actions you have given us your final marching orders," Ms. Granholm said in her goodbye to Mrs. Parks. "We are enlisted in this war."

Earlier this week, Mrs. Park's body lay in honor at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, the first time such a tribute had been accorded to a woman, and an estimated 30,000 people filed past her coffin.

Her body was flown to Detroit afer a memorial service on Tuesday at the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church in Washington.

She will be entombed later today in a mausoleum at Detroit's Woodlawn Cemetery.


Aretha Franklin sang "Impossible Dream" at the funeral for Rosa Parks today.


Rev. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, was one of several speakers today at Rosa Parks's funeral in Detroit.