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Oprah Winfrey, Cicely Tyson & Others Pay Tribute to Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks
On Monday, thousands of mourners filled the Metropolitian AME church in Washington for a memorial service for the late Rosa Parks, who died last week at the age of 92. Over the past two days, more than 40,000 people filed past her casket in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda Monday where her body had lain in honor. She was the first civilian and only second woman or African-American to receive such an honor. Speakers at Monday's memorial included Oprah Winfrey, actress Cicely Tyson, NAACP chair Julian Bond, civil rights pioneer Dorothy Height, Parks' childhood friend Johnnie Carr, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and NAACP President Bruce Gordon.
Rosa Parks is the first woman and only the second African-American to receive the honor of lying in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, usually reserved for Presidents, soldiers and politicians. Rosa Parks died at her home in Detroit, Michigan last week. She was 92 years old. Fifty years ago this December, she refused to give up her seat to a white man aboard a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested and convicted of violating the state’s segregation laws. Her act of resistance led to a 13-month boycott of the Montgomery bus system that would spark the civil rights movement and inspire freedom struggles all over the world.
After 10am on Monday morning, the casket was taken down the steps of the East Capitol by a military honor guard of pallbearers, followed by the Parks family. A vintage Metropolitan bus dressed in black bunting followed the hearse, along with other city buses to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church for a public memorial. More than 2,500 mourners filled the church 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. Speakers included civil rights leaders, congressmembers, senators, pastors and longtime friends of Rosa Parks.
* Reverend Grainger Browning Jr, pastor of Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, Maryland
* Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, (D-D.C.)
* Dorothy Height, longtime civil rights activist and president emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women
* Johnnie Carr, Rosa Parks’ Childhood Friend and veteran of the Montgomery bus boycott
* Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
* Oprah Winfrey, the Oprah Winfrey Show, born in Mississippi during segregation
* Cicely Tyson, award-winning African-American actress, played Rosa Parks in the movie "The Rosa Parks Story”
* Bruce Gordon, NAACP President
LISTEN ONLINE:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/01/1518216
After 10am on Monday morning, the casket was taken down the steps of the East Capitol by a military honor guard of pallbearers, followed by the Parks family. A vintage Metropolitan bus dressed in black bunting followed the hearse, along with other city buses to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church for a public memorial. More than 2,500 mourners filled the church 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. Speakers included civil rights leaders, congressmembers, senators, pastors and longtime friends of Rosa Parks.
* Reverend Grainger Browning Jr, pastor of Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, Maryland
* Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, (D-D.C.)
* Dorothy Height, longtime civil rights activist and president emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women
* Johnnie Carr, Rosa Parks’ Childhood Friend and veteran of the Montgomery bus boycott
* Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
* Oprah Winfrey, the Oprah Winfrey Show, born in Mississippi during segregation
* Cicely Tyson, award-winning African-American actress, played Rosa Parks in the movie "The Rosa Parks Story”
* Bruce Gordon, NAACP President
LISTEN ONLINE:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/01/1518216
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