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Cicely Tyson, who played Rosa Parks' mother in "The Rosa Parks Story," pays her respects to the civil rights leader in Montgomery.Deep South says goodbye
Thousands in still-divided Montgomery pay respects
Hands rest on Rosa Parks' coffin before it is taken into the Montgomery church where Parks was to lie in repose for public viewing.• Today: 10:30 a.m. service at St. Paul AME. The casket will be flown to Washington, D.C., and Parks' body will lie in state in the Capitol rotunda from 6 p.m. to midnight.
• Monday: Public viewing at the rotunda from 7-10 a.m.; memorial service at 1 p.m. at the Historical Metropolitan AME Church. Afterward, the casket will travel back to Detroit. Parks will lie in honor at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History from 9 p.m. Monday to 5 a.m. Wednesday.
• Wednesday: 11 a.m. funeral at Greater Grace Temple in Detroit. WDIV Local 4 will broadcast the procession and funeral live throughout the day.
Here is a look at some major milestones in civil rights activism:
1955: On December 1, Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus to make room for a white passenger, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1957: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is organized with Martin Luther King Jr. as the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolent and civil disobedience.
1957: On September 25, nine black students are blocked from entering formerly all-white Central High School on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and National Guards to Little Rock, Ark to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "Little Rock Nine"
1960: On February 1, four black students from North Carolina A&T College begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. The movement spreads across the nation.
1960: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organized by young activist
1961: In May, The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sends student volunteers, "freedom riders" on bus trips through the south to test the implementation of new laws prohibiting segregation in bus terminals.
1963: John F. Kennedy made historic civil rights speech June 11 at the White House
1963: On August 28, more than 200,000 people marsh on Washington D.C. and Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech.
1964: The Council of Federated Organization (COFO), civil rights groups launches a massive effort to register voters in Mississippi during what becomes known as Freedom Summer. Organizers also launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge the all-white slate from the slate party.
1965: On March 7, blacks begin a 54-mile march, from Selma to Montgomery in support of voting rights. The peaceful demonstrators meet violent resistance from police, who attacked them with tear gas, clubs, and whips. The incident is dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by media.
Compiled by Zena Simmons
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MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- They arrived by the thousands, some smiling and clutching signs, others' eyes sore from crying, to say a final farewell and thanks to Rosa Parks.
One wave after another filled the parking lot of her old church, St. Paul AME, eager to view the unassuming seamstress whose refusal to relinquish her seat on a bus in 1955 helped topple segregation and changed not only Montgomery, but history.
"I'm so hurt inside," said Pearl Armstrong Draper, 61, patting her heart. She was in junior high school during the bus boycott that followed Parks' arrest. "I'm glad she came home, but it hurts my bones to see her like this."
Parks, who died Monday, arrived home Saturday to a city where Jim Crow is dead and buried, but ghosts of what some residents call "the dark times" still haunt the present.
On the same block where residents last week unveiled the Civil Rights Memorial museum, tourists still flock to the First White House of the Confederacy, where its president, Jefferson Davis, plotted a war to maintain slavery.
How do you reconcile both?
"Very carefully," said Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright. "We're the cradle of the Confederacy and the birthplace of civil rights. There are people in the community who want to get rid of civil rights, and we can't erase what some consider the stigma of the Confederacy. We have to acknowledge and celebrate both segments."
It's a tricky balancing act, and even the most vigorous civic boosters acknowledge Parks' dream of equality is unmet. The city where slaves once outnumbered whites is now half-black, but most live in deeply segregated neighborhoods on its west side.
Statewide, blacks comprise 26 percent of the population but own 7 percent of the businesses. Three-fifths of Montgomery's black families with young children are headed by single parents, according to Auburn University Montgomery's Center for Demographic Research.
"In my neighborhood, we're still living in the 18th century, surrounded by opulence," said Frederick J. Williams, 51, a retired Marine whose city block lacks sewers. "We went from overt racism to covert racism and, I'm telling you, covert racism is far, far more dangerous."
Driving by the past
En route to the church, a police-led motorcade carrying Parks' mahogany casket drove past her old home, Cleveland Court apartments.
A few blocks from the intersection of Rosa Parks Avenue and Jefferson Davis Street, the red-brick complex managed by the Montgomery Housing Authority has allowed its green courtyards to go to seed.
A few children cheered the motorcade. Others sat on folding metal chairs on concrete landings a few doors down from Apt. 634, Parks' destination on the Cleveland Avenue bus route when she refused to stand for a white man.
"This was a real nice place when she was living here," said Beatrice Nickson, 72, a retired maid who pays $81 a month for her one-bedroom apartment. "Now, it's mostly young people. ... There are still the same Jim Crows now, you know that, but she changed things down South. We can do much more. We can ride the buses and sit wherever we want."
Parks' apartment is empty and a historical monument. A black bow is tied to the door. Living next door is Jasmine Vindiver, a third-grader who sang "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" with classmates at a Friday memorial.
"She went to jail because she didn't want to move," Jasmine said. "It's weird that they would think white people are better than blacks."
That service attracted more than 500 people at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. led the 381-day bus boycott that followed Parks' arrest. Excluding speakers, only about 15 of them were white.
Barbara Pate was one of them. The retired secretary is a member of One Montgomery, a group that discusses race relations every Tuesday morning over grits and eggs.
The group is led by Johnnie Carr, the 94-year-old lifelong friend of Parks and president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. The group was formed to lead the boycott and tackles social issues.
"The conversations we've had at Montgomery One have really helped," said Pate, 65. "It's good to sit down and talk."
Invisible barriers exist
Privately, many Montgomery residents acknowledge problems but warn Northerners not to be so smug about race relations. In Detroit, where Rosalyn Cabble lived from 1978 to 1981, racism was "more undercover," she said.
"Here in Montgomery, you know what to expect," said Cabble, 51. "Here, if they don't like blacks, you know it. They don't hide it. ... We've definitely had some problems, but we're addressing it."
When pressed, Cabble acknowledged the problems in the South are subtle, too. She can live where she wants. Laws mandate equal access to employment, but she said invisible barriers are evident. When she worked at a credit union four years ago, some customers made it clear they wanted a white teller, she said.
In the old days, the targets of the struggle were clear -- segregated buses, drinking fountains, restaurants -- said the Rev. Abraham Lincoln Woods, the deputy director of King's 1963 March on Washington.
Now, racism has become more insidious -- both in Alabama and nationwide, he said. Gaining economic equity for blacks and whites is difficult, Woods said.
"There's an old saying that everything has changed and nothing has changed," said Woods, a national board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that King co-founded in 1957.
"When we learned to reach our goals, then they changed the rules. But one would have to be an ostrich with your head in the sand to say we haven't made progress."
Woods said vestiges of Jim Crow remain in schools, Washington, D.C., and churches. The younger generation of blacks hasn't helped the cause, he said.
"It's not the KKK or neo-Nazis that are killing blacks now. We're killing ourselves," Woods said.
'Begging her pardon'
In Montgomery, officials have studied pardoning Parks for about a year. It's unlikely, but "we should be begging her pardon for how we treated her," said Bright, the city's mayor. As he spoke Friday outside King's old church, surrounded by veterans of the civil rights struggle, 84-year-old Warren G. Brown Sr. eased through the crowd to shake Bright's hand.
"I knew the dark days," Brown said, "and I want to thank you for making them better."
Saturday, as Parks lay inside the church where she once taught Sunday school -- dressed all in white, reminding some of an angel -- politics were the furthest thing from the minds of many mourners.
There may be work to do, but Montgomery -- and the world -- is better because of Parks, said Nathaniel Smiley, 60, as he stood at the end of a long line outside the church.
"We need to thank her so much," said the retired Marine. "So much is different. As a young man, if I did what she did, I would have had a rope around my neck."
You can reach Joel Kurth at (313) 222-2610 or jkurth@detnews.com.
A horse-drawn carriage carries Rosa Parks' casket to St. Paul AME church, where Parks attended when she lived in Alabama.
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