Today is the 60th anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. Her action sparked a boycott that ended when the Supreme Court struck down Alabama’s racial segregation laws.
A young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr. led the boycott. Attending King’s church was a college student named Jesse White, now the Illinois Secretary of State.
Illinois Public Radio’s Jim Meadows spoke with White, who was also ordered out of a bus seat reserved for whites in Montgomery. But on his first ride, he resisted the driver’s order.
White was a student at Alabama State College at the time. He was back in Montgomery over this Thanksgiving weekend for Alabama State’s homecoming.