'It is this small, quiet woman, whose name will be remembered long after the names of senators and presidents have been forgotten. Parks made history, even though she never held public office and was not a wealthy woman. She made us see and agree that everyone should be free.'ĭemocratic Senator Barack Obama, of Illinois, the only African-American in the U.S. 'Let us never forget that in that simple act and a lifetime of race and dignity, she showed us every single day what it means to be free. Parks ignited the most significant social movement in American history with her refusal, which triggered a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., who was not well-known at the time. 'The world knows of Rosa Parks because of a single simple act of dignity and courage that struck a lethal blow to the foundations of legal bigotry,' he said. Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, recalled riding a segregated bus to school in Arkansas when he was a child. More than 4,000 people packed the church to honor the African-American woman who in 1955 refused to give up her bus seat for a white man, as the law in Montgomery, Alabama, required at the time.įormer President Bill Clinton, who honored Mrs. Rousing gospel music filled Detroit's Greater Grace Temple Church as what was supposed to have been a three-hour service turned into a daylong event. civil rights movement 50 years ago by refusing to give up her seat on a city bus.

Thousands of people attended a day-long funeral for the the woman who inspired the U.S. Civil rights heroine Rosa Parks, who died last week at age 92, was laid to rest in Detroit on Wednesday.

Rosa parks funeral