Rosa, 'Take Your Rest'
A church packed with 4,000 mourners celebrated the life of Rosa Parks Wednesday in an impassioned, song-filled funeral, with a crowd of notables giving thanks for the humble woman whose dignity and defiance helped transform a nation.
"The woman we honored today held no public office, she wasn't a wealthy woman, didn't appear in the society pages," said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. "And yet when the history of this country is written, it is this small, quiet woman whose name will be remembered long after the names of senators and presidents have been forgotten."
CBS News correspondent Byron Pitts reports that the mood was
as mourners stood in line for hours."There's nothing to be sad about. She was a wonderful woman," said Eva Fortune.
The funeral, which stretched well past its three-hour scheduled time, followed a week of remembrances during which Parks' coffin was brought from Detroit, where she died Oct. 24; to Montgomery, Ala., where she sparked the civil rights movement 50 years ago by refusing to give her bus seat to a white man; to Washington, where she became the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda.
Those in the audience held hands and sang the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" as family members filed past her casket before it was closed.
"Mother Parks, take your rest. You have certainly earned it," said Bishop Charles Ellis III of Greater Grace Temple, who led the service.
Former President Clinton told those packed into the Greater Grace Temple church in Detroit that Parks became known around the world "because of a single, simple act of dignity and courage that struck a lethal blow to the foundations of legal bigotry."
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm called Parks "a heroic warrior for equality" — and "a warrior for the everyman and the everywoman."
Illinois Senator Barack Obama said history will remember "this small, quiet woman." He said her name will be known "long after the names of senators and presidents have been forgotten."
Under brilliant autumn sunshine, crowds began gathering at the church hours before the doors opened, reports CBS News correspondent Lou Miliano. Everyday people joined national political figures like former President Bill Clinton and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, arm-in-arm, swaying to "We Shall Overcome" as mourners filed past the casket, final good-byes on their lips.
Also present were Michigan governors past and present, Democratic politicians, entertainers such as actress Cicely Tyson and singer Aretha Franklin, auto industry executives, and civil rights activists like Rev. Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan.
President Clinton recalled that he was a schoolboy when Parks refused to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Ala., bus.
"When Rosa showed us that black folks didn't have to sit in the back any more, two of my friends and I, who strongly approved of what she had done, decided we didn't have to sit in the front any more," he said.
"She did help to set us all free," said Mr. Clinton, the first of some 25 speakers. "She made us see, and agree, that everyone should be free."
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."
CBS News correspondent Lou Miliano reports the remembrances for Rosa Parks are reawakening an interest in black history.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.