Rosa Parks to lie in honor at Capitol

WASHINGTON -- Rosa Parks will be honored with a two-day public viewing beginning Sunday evening in the U.S. Capitol.

The House on Friday passed a resolution to allow her body to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda on Sunday and Monday. The Senate approved the resolution late Thursday.

Parks, who died Monday at 92, will be the first woman to lie in honor at the Capitol. It is a privilege usually extended to presidents.

"I think she's real deserving," said Curtis Williams of Montgomery, Ala.

Parks' body is scheduled to arrive at the Capitol at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. The public viewing on Sunday, from 6:30 p.m. to midnight, will include singing, a wreath-laying and prayers. The Monday viewing is 7-10 a.m.

Her refusal to surrender her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery 50 years ago launched a 381-day bus boycott that fueled a movement to end racial public discrimination.

Williams, 66, remembers going to the first mass meeting to organize the Montgomery bus boycott.

"Well, everybody was ready for a change, but I guess nobody had the nerve to start," said Williams, owner of Curtis Barber and Style Shop in Montgomery. "She had other backers, but she was the one who took the risk."

Democrats and Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., supported the measure.

Former President Ronald Reagan was the last person so honored -- thousands filed past his coffin over three days in June 2004.

Several black lawmakers said Parks inspired them to seek office.

"Because she took that seat, nobody has to sit in the back of the bus," said Rep. Al Green, D-Texas.

Parks was unable to get work and was threatened after the boycott and moved to Detroit with her family in 1957. She worked as a legislative aide for Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., until retiring in 1988.

"She reminds me of what Mother Teresa was like," Conyers said on the House floor Friday. "She had her own sphere of serenity."

Parks' body will be at the sanctuary of St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, her childhood church in Montgomery, Ala., on Saturday.

After leaving Washington, D.C., Parks' body will go to the Wright African American Museum in Detroit for viewing on Nov. 1. Her funeral service is Wednesday, Nov. 2, at Greater Grace Temple in Detroit.

Southwest Airlines is flying Parks' body from Detroit to Alabama, and then up to Baltimore-Washington International Airport on Sunday for the Capitol viewing, airline spokeswoman Edna Ruano said.

"We are proud to see the nation will be able to honor the mother of the modern civil rights movement," said Sandi Gouge, spokeswoman for Troy University in Montgomery, home of the Rosa Parks Library and Museum.

"Certainly she is a national figure, but she is also a part of the Troy University family," Gouge said.

E-mail: gwright@gns.gannett.com

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