Rosa Parks' body returned to Detroit
Rosa Parks’ body has been returned to the city she called home, with thousands waiting in a line more to pay their final respects to the US civil rights leader.
Parks was 92 when she died on October 24 in Detroit. She lay in honour in Montgomery, Alabama, and in Washington before her body was returned last night to the city where she had lived since 1957.
Her mahogany coffin was flown from Washington to Detroit, where it was carried into the rotunda of the Charles Wright Museum of African American History for round-the-clock viewing until early tomorrow.
By the time the museum doors opened last night, thousands were lined up outside. As rain began to fall steadily, umbrellas sprouted and some members of the crowd began singing We Shall Overcome.
Tony Dotson, 43, a maintenance worker from Detroit, stood near the front of the line and said he wanted to pay honour to Parks.
“I appreciate what a blessing she was, and I’m thankful she was right here in Detroit and we didn’t have to travel far to see her,” he said.
Deborah Lee Horne, 56, of Detroit, said she was encouraged by the sight of so many children and teenagers waiting. “I think what she did needs to be highlighted for young people,” she said. “If not, they have no idea.”
Viewing was to continue until 5am (10am Irish time) tomorrow, with Parks’ funeral to be held at 11am (4pm Irish time) at Greater Grace Temple Church. Former President Bill Clinton and singer Aretha Franklin were scheduled to attend.
In a three-hour memorial service yesterday at historic Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, Parks was remembered for the example she set with a simple act of defiance: refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus on December 1, 1955.
Chat show host Oprah Winfrey, who was born in Mississippi during segregation, said Parks’ stand “changed the trajectory of my life and the lives of so many other people in the world.”
Parks became the first woman to lie in honour in the Rotunda, sharing the tribute given to Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and other national leaders. Capitol Police estimated the crowd at more than 30,000 but some participants said it was far bigger.
Parks was a 42-year-old tailor’s assistant at a Montgomery department store when she was arrested and fined 10 dollars plus 4 dollars in court costs. That triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system led by a 26-year-old minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The US Supreme Court ruled in December 1956 that segregated seats on city buses were unconstitutional, giving momentum to the battle against laws that separated the races in public accommodations and businesses throughout the South.
The act exposed Parks and her husband, Raymond, to harassment and death threats, and they lost their jobs in Montgomery. They moved to Detroit with Rosa Parks’ mother, Leona McCauley, in 1957.
Rosa Parks held a series of low-paying jobs before congressman John Conyers hired her in 1965 to work in his Detroit office. Conyers, speaking during the Washington memorial service, recalled a 1990 visit to Detroit by Nelson Mandela.
The former South African president led the crowd in a chant of Parks’ name, “which made us realize that this is an international phenomenon that we celebrate,” Conyers said. “Rosa Parks is worldwide.”
