Rosa, 'Take Your Rest'

Final Tribute To Civil Rights Pioneer Draws Thousands In Detroit

(CBS/AP) 
Black-suited ushers in white gloves escorted people to their seats. The casket was flanked by large bouquets of white flowers and a white cross. Flower arrangements lined the stage steps and scores of choir members sat on or near the stage.

There were no representatives from the Bush administration at the service.

"The president, Mrs. Bush and several members of the Cabinet paid their respects here in Washington and are not at the funeral," said a White House spokeswoman.

Hours before the funeral began, the line to get one of the 2,000 available public seats at Greater Grace Temple extended for blocks to the west of the church in Parks' adopted hometown.

Claudette Bond, 62, had been waiting since 6 p.m. Tuesday in a lawn chair. She was first in line and didn't budge, even as temperatures dipped below 40 degrees.

As a white hearse carried Parks' body from the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, where viewing lasted until the pre-dawn hours, dozens of people holding pictures of Parks crowded around it. As it began moving, they shouted, "We love you."

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CBS News correspondent Lou Miliano reports the remembrances for Rosa Parks are reawakening an interest in black history.

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Parks was 92 when she died Oct. 24 in Detroit. Nearly 50 years earlier, she was a 42-year-old tailor's assistant at a department store in Montgomery, Alabama, when 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. Her action on Dec. 1, 1955, triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in December 1956 that segregated seats on city buses were unconstitutional, giving momentum to the U.S. civil rights 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' mother, Leona McCauley, in 1957.

Parks held a series of low-paying jobs before U.S. Rep. John Conyers hired her in 1965 to work in his Detroit office. She remained there until 1987.

After the funeral, Parks' casket was put on an antique, gold-trimmed, horse-drawn carriage for the seven-mile procession to the cemetery. Her body was to be entombed in a mausoleum along with those of her husband and mother.