Rice: Without Parks, I wouldn't be here

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Hundreds of mourners remembered Rosa Parks Sunday for her defiant act on a city bus that inspired the Civil Rights Movement and helped pave the way for other blacks, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.\nCascades of roses surrounded Parks' casket in a chapel bearing her name at St. Paul A.M.E. Church, where she was once a member. A separate wing was opened for the overflow crowd and hundreds more stood outside.\n"I was here when Rosa Parks started, and I just wanted to be here when she departed," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.\nThe body of the 92-year-old Parks, who died Monday at her home in Detroit, was to later lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. No other woman has been granted that honor.\nRice said she and others who grew up in Alabama during the height of Parks' activism might not have realized her impact on their lives then, "but I can honestly say that without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing here today as secretary of state."\nAlabama Gov. Bob Riley credited Parks with inspiring protests against social injustice around the world.\n"I firmly believe God puts different people in different parts of history so great things can happen," Riley said. "I think Rosa Parks is one of those people."\nParks was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Among those who supported her was King, who led the 381-day boycott of the city's bus system that helped initiate the modern Civil Rights Movement.\n"She was a gentle giant," his son, Martin Luther King III, said at the memorial.\n"I think she had a defining stand in the civil rights movement," said Estella Jernigan, 20, a student at Troy University, before the service started.\nLowery and the Rev. Jesse Jackson said the best way for blacks to carry on Parks' legacy would be to push Congress to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which they said would be in jeopardy when it comes up for review in 2007.\nThe Rev. Al Sharpton, who was a year old at the time of Parks' arrest, said when he arrived in Montgomery for the memorial, he thought about "how if she had just moved her seat, how history might of changed."\nSharpton, a New York City activist, said national leaders such as Rice and former Secretary of State Colin Powell would have never reached their posts without Parks' symbolic act. Rice would be struggling in a racially charged Birmingham, and "Colin Powell would be sitting in a segregated Army barracks," Sharpton preached to the cheering audience.\nJohnnie Carr, a 94-year-old veteran of the bus boycott, said Parks was her childhood friend, a woman who "gave every ounce of her devotion" to fighting racial inequality.\n"We have accomplished a lot, we've come a long way, but believe me, we have a long way to go," Carr said.