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Mother of Civil Rights Movement honored

Hundreds of people filed passed the body of Rosa Parks yesterday in Montgomery, Alabama, just a few miles from where the civil rights icon made history by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Many of the mourners paused for a moment look at Parks` body in an open casket at St. Paul A.M.E. Church.

After a brief ceremony at the airport, a hearse drove her body through the streets of Montgomery. About a block and a half from St. Paul, the casket was loaded into a horse drawn carriage, which was followed by about 100 people holding hands as it slowly made its way to the church.

The body of the 92-year-old Parks, who died Monday at her home in Detroit, was brought to Montgomery on a chartered jet flown by Lou Freeman, the first black man to become a chief pilot for a U.S. carrier, according to Southwest Airlines. After the public viewing in Montgomery, Mrs. Parks` body will be flown to Washington for public viewing at the Capitol rotunda, the first time in U.S. history that this has occured for a woman.