30,000 Americans pay respects to Parks

MORE than 30,000 Americans streamed through the US Capitol Rotunda to pay tribute yesterday to Rosa Parks, filing by her casket in hushed awe of the woman whose defiant act on a city bus inspired the modern civil rights movement.

“I rejoice that my country recognises that this woman changed the course of American history, that this woman became a cure for the cancer of segregation,” said the Rev Vernon Shannon, 68, pastor of John Wesley African-Methodist- Episopal Zion in Washington, one of many who rose before dawn to see the casket. Elderly women carrying purses, young couples holding hands and small children in the arms of their parents reverently proceeded around the raised wooden casket.

Capitol Police spokeswoman Sergeant Jessica Gissubel said more than 30,000 had passed through the Rotunda since Sunday evening, when the viewing began.

Many were overcome by emotion. Monica Grady, 47, was moved to tears, she said, that Ms Parks was “so brave at the time without really knowing the consequences” of her actions.

Bathed in a spotlight, Ms Parks’s casket stood in the centre of a Rotunda that includes a bronze bust of the Rev Martin Luther King Jr, who led the 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system that helped initiate the US civil rights movement.

Ms Parks, a former seamstress, became the first woman to lie in honour in the Rotunda, sharing the tribute bestowed upon Abraham Lincoln, John F Kennedy and other leaders.

President George W Bush and congressional leaders gathered for a brief ceremony on Sunday night, listening as members of Baltimore’s Morgan State University choir sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Ms Parks, who died last week at 92, was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, an incident that inspired King and helped touch off the civil rights movement.

Republican John Conyers of Michigan, in whose Detroit congressional office Ms Parks worked for years, said the ceremony and public viewing showed “the legacy of Rosa Parks is more than just a success for the civil rights movement or for African-Americans. It means it is a national honour”. Ms Parks was also being remembered yesterday at a memorial service at the Metropolitan AME Church in Washington and would then lie in repose at the Charles H Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

Mr Bush, who presented a wreath but did not speak at the ceremony, issued a proclamation ordering the US flag to be flown at half-staff over all public buildings tomorrow, the day of Parks’ funeral and burial in Detroit.