MONTGOMERY, Alabama (AP) - Hundreds of mourners, politicians and activists attended a memorial service yesterday for Rosa Parks, who inspired the US civil rights movement by refusing to give up a seat on a city bus to a white man. Cascades of roses covered her 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. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that she and others who grew up in Alabama during the height of Parks' activism might not have realised her impact on their lives, "but I can honestly say that without Mrs Parks, I would not be standing here today as secretary of state". Alabama Governor Bob Riley credited Parks with inspiring protests against social injustice around the world. "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." Parks had been lying in honour at the church since Saturday, when hundreds of people slowly filed past her casket. Later yesterday her body was moved to the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D C, where it lies in honour through to today, becoming the first woman to do so. "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. The body of the 92-year-old Parks, who died last 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 US carrier, according to Southwest Airlines. After Parks was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat, she turned to her minister, the Rev Martin Luther King Jr, for aid. King led the 381-day boycott of the city's bus system that helped initiate the modern civil rights movement. Reprinted from jamaicaobserver.com