Washington – Rosa Parks will be honored with a public viewing in the U.S. Capitol.
The House on Friday passed a resolution to allow her body to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda on Sunday and Monday.
The Senate approved the resolution late Thursday.
Parks, who died Monday at 92, will be the first woman to lie in honor at the Capitol. It is a privilege usually extended to presidents.
“I think she’s real deserving,” said Curtis Williams of Montgomery, Ala.
Her refusal to surrender her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery 50 years ago launched a 381-day bus boycott that fueled a movement to end racial discrimination in public policies.
Williams, 66, remembers going to the first mass meeting to organize the Montgomery bus boycott.
“Well, everybody was ready for a change, but I guess nobody had the nerve to start,” said Williams, owner of Curtis Barber and Style Shop in Montgomery.
“She had other backers, but she was the one who took the risk.”
Democrats and Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., supported the measure.
Former President Reagan was the last person so honored – thousands filed past his coffin over three days in June 2004.
Several black lawmakers said Parks inspired them to seek office.
“Because she took that seat, nobody has to sit in the back of the bus,” said Rep. Al Green, D-Texas.
Parks was unable to get work and was threatened after the boycott and moved to Detroit with her family in 1957.
She worked as a legislative aide for Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., until retiring in 1988.
“She reminds me of what Mother Teresa was like,” Conyers said on the House floor Friday. “She had her own sphere of serenity.”
Officials at the Architect of the Capitol office were still working out details of the Parks event Friday afternoon.
Her funeral service will be Wednesday at Greater Grace Temple in Detroit.
