In this handout from The White House, US President Barack Obama sits on the famed Rosa Parks bus at the Henry Ford Museum following an event April 18, 2012 in Dearborn, Michigan. (Photo by Pete Souza/White House Photo via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says the dedication in the Capitol of a statue of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks will be a “powerful moment.”

Obama is to speak at next Wednesday’s ceremony.

Parks’ refusal in December 1955 to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger led to a citywide bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., and encouraged nationwide efforts to end segregation. Parks died in October 2005.

Obama said Thursday in a radio interview with Al Sharpton that the statue will put a seamstress who helped bring about a “more just America” in her rightful place among some of the titans of U.S. government.

Officials say the statue will be the first full-length one of an African-American woman in the Capitol.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.