|
1 000s at Rosa Parks funeral
02/11/2005 15:55 - (SA)
|
|
|
 |
|
| A hearse, front, carrying the coffin of Rosa Parks heads up Woodward Avenue after leaving the Charles H Wright Museum of African American History.
(Duane Burleson, AP)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Detroit - Thousands of people prepared to honour Rosa Parks at her funeral Wednesday, after at least 60 000 paid tribute to the civil rights pioneer in her native state of Alabama, the nation's capital and her adopted city of Detroit.
A white hearse carrying Parks's body travelled early on Wednesday from the Charles H Wright Museum of African American History where viewing lasted until the pre-dawn hours to the church where her funeral was to be held later in the morning.
Dozens of people holding pictures of Parks crowded around the hearse and shouted "We love you" as it began moving.
Claudette Bond, 62, was the first person in line outside the glass doors of Greater Grace Temple, waiting since 18:00 on Tuesday for one of 2 000 public seats for Parks' funeral. She'd spent the night in a lawn chair. Jesse Jackson
By 07:30, the line for the funeral extended more than two blocks west of the church with about 800 people waiting.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson was to deliver Parks's eulogy. Among those planning to attend the service were former President Bill Clinton, his wife, senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, civil rights leaders and other dignitaries. Aretha Franklin was to sing.
The church holds 4 000 people, even more than the Washington church where President George W Bush and wife Laura attended Parks's memorial service.
Parks was 92 when she died October 24 in Detroit. Nearly 50 years earlier she was arrested and fined $10 plus $4 in court costs for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus. Death threats
Her action on December 1 1955, triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system led by the Reverend Martin Luther King jun.
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.
But Parks and her husband Raymond were exposed to harassment and death threats in Montgomery, where they also lost their jobs. They moved to Detroit with Rosa Parks's mother, Leona McCauley, in 1957.
- AP
|
