Nation bids farewell to Rosa Parks

updated 12:08 a.m. ET Oct. 31, 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush, members of Congress and ordinary Americans paid tribute to Rosa Parks under the soaring dome of the Capitol Rotunda on Sunday, honoring the woman whose defiant act on a city bus challenged segregation in the South and inspired the civil rights movement.

Parks, a former seamstress, became the first woman to lie in honor in the Rotunda, sharing an honor bestowed upon Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and the nation’s highest leaders. Bush and congressional leaders paused to lay wreaths by her casket, while members of a university choir greeted her with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Parks died Monday at her home in Detroit, at the age of 92.

“She was a citizen in the best sense of the word,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who was among several lawmakers who paid homage to Parks. “She caused things to happen in our society that made us a better, more caring, more just society.”

Outside the Capitol, thousands of people awaited the chance to pay their respects, some arriving before noon to be able to file past her casket. Some carried signs that read, “Thank you, Rosa Parks.”

Public viewing was to last until midnight on Sunday and from 7 a.m. until 10 a.m. on Monday.

Fred Allen, 59, who grew up in segregated Halls, Tenn., brought his 20-year-old son to help him understand the civil rights era.

‘She started the movement’
“He has no idea what it was like to grow up in the South, where you had to hold your head down,” Allen said.

Slide show   Rosa Parks (1913-2005) The civil rights pioneer whose act of passive defiance sparked the civil rights movement in America is memorialized around the nation.

Robert Cunningham, 65, caught a flight from Atlanta with his wife, daughter and four grandchildren so they could pay their last respects. When they learned Friday night that Parks’ body would lie in honor in the Capitol, Cunningham’s wife said, “We have to go.”

“She started the movement,” Cunningham said of Parks, staring at the West facade of the Capitol. “She was the mother of the civil rights movement by simply saying, ’I’m tired of giving up my seat.”’

Earlier Sunday, Parks was remembered by hundreds of mourners in Montgomery, Ala., including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was raised in Alabama.

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