An Overflowing Tribute to an Icon
Thousands Gather at D.C. Service for Farewell to Civil Rights Hero

By Debbi Wilgoren and Theola S. Labbe
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 1, 2005

America's mighty and meek converged on a historic black church in downtown Washington yesterday afternoon for a hand-clapping, arm-waving, tear-inducing tribute to Rosa Parks, the civil rights matriarch who died last week at age 92.

It was the final segment of a 20-hour memorial visit that drew an estimated 40,000 people to the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, where Parks's body, in a polished wood coffin, had lain in honor overnight.

Mourners filled the 2,500-seat sanctuary of Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church to overflowing, and hundreds crowded onto sidewalks and into the auditorium of a nearby office building to hear or see broadcasts of the 2 1/2 -hour service. As those outside sang along with "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "We Shall Overcome," their voices could be heard inside the red-brick church.

In his invocation, the Rev. Grainger Browning of Ebenezer AME Church in Prince George's County, linked Parks, a deaconess in the denomination, to a pantheon of black American heroes: Nat Turner, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, Lorraine Hansberry, Mary Church Terrell, Martin Luther King Jr. and many others.

The one-time seamstress was lauded by U.S. senators and representatives, civil rights leaders and pastors, actress Cicely Tyson and Alabama-born Johnnie Carr, 94, a friend of Parks's for more than 80 years.

After the service, the coffin and Parks's family and friends were flown to Detroit, where a funeral and burial are scheduled for tomorrow. President Bush has ordered that flags at federal buildings be flown at half-staff that day.

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey and broadcast journalist Gwen Ifill, black women who have risen to the top of their professions, spoke of learning about Parks as children, long before they could comprehend the impact of what she had done.

Ifill, 50, called Parks "the kind of woman that I would spend the rest of my life trying to be. . . . The woman we want our daughters, and our sons, to grow up to be."

Winfrey, 51, recalled her father telling her "about this colored woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus. In my child's mind, I thought, 'She must be really big,' " Winfrey said, to laughter.

When she met the diminutive Parks years later, Winfrey added, "I said, 'Thank you. For myself and for every colored girl and every colored boy.'. . . I would not be standing here today, nor standing where I stand every day . . . had she not chosen to say we shall not -- we shall not -- be moved."

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) -- who said Parks's refusal to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man in 1955 "led kids like me to do sit-ins" -- acted as mistress of ceremonies. D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) was in the pews along with most of the D.C. Council, Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele (R) and several other elected officials from the region.

Youths from a program Parks founded to teach later generations about the civil rights struggle walked slowly through the aisles, holding blown-up photos of Parks.

On this day, senior officials from the federal government-- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) -- sat toward the back.

People began lining up outside the church at 8 a.m. while Parks's coffin was still in the Rotunda. They cheered for dignitaries, who arrived shortly after noon, such as Dorothy I. Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women, and again when they saw Parks's motorcade: security vehicles, a black hearse, a vintage Metro bus and three modern buses swathed in black bunting and filled with family and friends.

Members of the D.C. National Guard's honor guard eased the coffin from the hearse with gloved hands, and the crowd fell silent. Then a voice cried out, "Well done, Rosa!"

Another voice: "Thank you, Rosa!"

D.C. Officer Frank Strother said he tried to admit as many elderly people and children into the church as he could. "This is something historical that will bless their life," said Strother, who was 9 when Parks refused to give up her seat.

Kathleen Adams, 57, of Northwest Washington followed the service as it boomed from four speakers and reverberated down the block. Later, she said, she would mail Parks's obituary and the program from the service to her daughter Clinthia, 16, who lives in North Carolina.

After the service, Carolyn Curtis of Northwest Washington got close enough to the hearse to lay a hand on it. She stood still, tears in her eyes, until a police officer asked her to step aside so "Rosa could go home."

Curtis, 51, recalled growing up in a segregated St. Mary's County, where she could not sit at the front of the Catholic church whose parish school she attended. In the lunchroom, signs read: "Coloreds only." "We are able to accomplish what we can now because of what Rosa Parks did in her day," Curtis said. "My nieces and nephews can go to school anywhere."

Not far away, on Metropolitan's grand front steps, another generation of black leaders talked about Parks's legacy and the considerable work that remains to be done. Such Democratic stalwarts as Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's presidential campaign, and Alexis M. Herman and Rodney E. Slater, Cabinet officials during the Clinton administration, helped organize the tributes to Parks and said her memory will live on in those who continue her struggle.

"Rosa Parks has been a healing force for our nation," Brazile said. "From this day forward, we have to make civil rights . . . a moral issue like it was in the 1960s and the 1970s. Something that brings America together to realize the principles of our nation."

Several leaders said many people today have moved away from Parks's goals of removing barriers and fighting injustice. "She sat down, yes, so that we might stand up, but the problem is that folks are still sitting down," said Bishop George A. Stallings Jr., founder of the Imani Temple African-American Catholic Congregation. "Our folks are still sitting down without realizing that Rosa and King are just the foundation for the stones that still must be laid."

Hour earlier, on the Capitol grounds, some of those who came to pay tribute to Parks wondered who would assume her mantle.

"Our generation is facing a serious lack of good, solid, principled leadership," said Jay Fossett, 32, who drove from Long Island, N.Y., with his wife and three daughters starting at 3:30 a.m. "To take this movement further, we need a leader like Rosa Parks. But I don't know who that would be."

For much of Sunday night, the lines to enter the Rotunda snaked for blocks around the complex and across the Mall. But by daybreak yesterday, only a few hundred people at a time waited to get in. Sterling resident Hillary Tattersall, 42, took her 9-year-old daughter Taylor to the Capitol instead of to school. Kwame Lilliard, 66, flew in from Nashville shortly after 6 a.m.

"I had to come. I had to be here to honor this wonderful woman. This is about African motherhood," Lilliard said. "With Rosa Parks here at the Capitol today, the old power structure was officially broken."

At 10 a.m., when U.S. Capitol Police closed the line to the Rotunda, about 50 people remained. They migrated to nearby Constitution Avenue, where they applauded as Parks's motorcade pulled past.

Staff writers Petula Dvorak and Hamil R. Harris contributed to this report.