WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 (Xinhuanet) -- The casket of late US civil rights icon Rosa Parks was moved to a local church Monday, one day after it was placed in honor in the Rotunda of US Capitol.

U.S. President George W. Bush (R) greets family members of late civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks as her body lies in honor in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington Oct. 30. (Reuters)

    Parks, who died at the age of 92 last week, is the first woman lied in honor in the Rotunda, sharing an honor bestowed upon Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and other late US leaders.

    A memorial service will be held in her honor in the Washington DC Metropolitan AMC Church later in the day.

    On Sunday, US President George W. Bush and congressional leaders paused to lay wreaths by her casket, while thousands of ordinary Americans paid their tribute to her under the dome of the Capitol Rotunda.

    Rosa Parks was born to a black family on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama.

    She won national prominence in 1955 as she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, in defiance of the local racial segregation laws.

    Parks was then arrested and it sparked a lengthy citywide bus boycott by black riders, and inspired other acts of defiance that blossomed into the national civil rights movement.

Pallbearers carry the casket of the late civil rights icon Rosa Parks into the U.S. Capitol Rotunda to lay in honors, a tribute usually reserved for presidents, soldiers and politicians, on Capitol Hill in Washington Oct. 30. (Reuters)

    The protest ended only after the US Supreme Court ruled on November 13, 1956, that segregation on city buses was unconstitutional.

    That ruling encouraged others to seek an end to racial injustice around the country.

    On Friday, US Congress declared in a resolution that her body should lie in the Capitol "so that the citizens of the United States may pay their last respects to this great American."

    On Sunday, Bush ordered US flags flown at half-staff to honor Parks, who will be buried in her adopted hometown of Detroit on Wednesday. Enditem