Introduction
After nearly seventy years of activism, Rosa Louise Parks died on October 14, 2005, in her home in Detroit at the age of ninety-two. Within days, Representative John Conyers, Jr., who had employed Parks for twenty years, introduced a resolution to have her body lie in honor in the Capitol rotunda. Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle rushed to pay tribute to the “mother of the civil rights movement,” making Parks the first woman and second African American to be granted this honor.
Various dignitaries attended the viewing, including Condoleezza Rice, who said “without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing here today as Secretary of State.” Forty thousand Americans came to the Capitol to bear witness to her passing.1 Her body was moved from the Capitol to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church for a public memorial and then back to Detroit, where thousands waited in the rain to pay their respects to one of Detroit’s finest, with tributes from Bill Clinton to Aretha Franklin and presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
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