Washington ? In death, Rosa Parks is joining a select few, including presidents and war heroes, accorded a public viewing in the Capitol Rotunda. It’s the place where, six years ago, President Clinton and congressional leaders lauded the former seamstress for a simple act of defiance that changed the course of race relations.

On Sunday, Parks becomes the first woman to lie in honor in the vast circular room under the Capitol dome.

The House agreed by voice vote Friday that the body of Parks will lie in honor in the Rotunda on Sunday and Monday “so that the citizens of the United States may pay their last respects to this great American.” The Senate approved the resolution Thursday night.

Congress has authorized this rite only 29 times since homage was paid to Henry Clay in 1852.

Those honored include Abraham Lincoln, Gen. John Pershing, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and unknown soldiers from the world wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

The most recent was President Reagan in June last year.

Parks is one of the few not to be a government official or a member of the military. In 1909, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the architect who designed Washington, D.C., was commemorated 84 years after his death. In 1998, two Capitol Police officers slain in the line of duty lay in the ornate room 180 feet below the Capitol dome.

The Rev. Dr. John Joseph Hunter, senior minister of the First AME Church, and other celebrants release peace doves Friday after a memorial service for civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks at the First AME Church in Los Angeles.

Parks, arrested in 1955 after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., turned to her minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King, for aid. King in turn led a 381-day boycott of the city’s bus system that helped initiate the modern civil rights movement.

“This brave, courageous spirit ignited a movement, not just in Montgomery, but a movement that spread like wildfire across the American South and the nation,” said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a leader of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

“The Capitol serves as a beacon of American liberty, freedom and democracy, and Rosa Parks served as the mother of the America we grew to be,” House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a joint statement.

From Monday night until Wednesday morning, Parks will lie in repose at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

Aretha Franklin is to sing at the funeral Wednesday at Greater Grace Temple Church in Detroit, said an official with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute of Self Development.