Rosa Parks and Condoleezza Rice are from the same bowl of grits. However, history will judge both differently. Parks stood with the oppressed of the world and Rice stood with the oppressor.Rosa Parks was loved all over the world. She visited Canada in 1998 and was given an honorary degree from Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Parks became the first woman in U.S. history to lie in the Capital Rotunda, joining a select few – including presidents and war heroes – given a public viewing in the historic venue. Her memorial service was held at the St. Paul AME Church in Montgomery.
It is significant that the AME stands for African Methodist Episcopal and was the church of Paul Robeson, Harriett Tubman and other African American freedom fighters. Parks also has the distinction of being recognized by both the civil rights and Black power movements. While the corporate media has highlighted Parks' role in the civil rights movement, they are unable or unwilling to discuss the fact that she also supported the more radical wing of the African American liberation struggle.
Parks actually spoke at the funeral of Robert F. Williams, the black revolutionary from Monroe, North Carolina who was forced to flee to Cuba and China after being falsely accused of kidnapping a Euro-American couple during a confrontation with a racist mob. At Williams' funeral on October 22, 1996, Parks told the congregation at a Monroe church that she and those who walked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama had "always admired Robert Williams for his courage and his commitment to freedom. The work that he did should go down in history and never be forgotten."
