Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks honored on Capitol Hill News
Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks honored on Capitol Hill

[JURIST] Thousands of people gathered Sunday under the dome of the Capitol Rotunda to view the closed casket of civil rights activist Rosa Parks [TIME profile], who died of natural causes at the age of 92 last week [JURIST report]. Parks is remembered most for her December 1, 1955 act of refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. At this time, such racial segregation was still legal, despite the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board [text; Brown Foundation website] banning the "inherently unequal" segregation of blacks and whites in schools. Parks' simple gesture led to the year-long boycott [Wikipedia backgrounder] of the Montgomery public transit system which ended only once racial segregation was deemed illegal in 1956 [Gayle v. Browder text; Stetson Law School backgrounder, PDF]. In 1999, Parks received the Congressional Gold Medal [US Mint website]. Parks is the first woman to lie in honor in the Rotunda and at a Capitol ceremony Sunday, attended by the President and members of Congress, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice [official profile] noted that "without Ms. Parks, I probably would not be standing here today as Secretary of State." A memorial service at the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church in Washington is planned for Monday and Parks' funeral and burial is scheduled for Wednesday in Detroit. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.