December first marks 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 a year later, when the Supreme Court struck down Alabama's racial segregation laws.
A young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr. led the boycott. And attending King's church was a college student named Jesse White. He's now the Illinois Secretary of State.
In an interview with Illinois Public Radio's Jim Meadows, White explained that as an African-American, he, too, was ordered out of a bus seat reserved for whites in Montgomery. But on his first ride, he had resisted the driver's order.
White was back in Montgomery over Thanksgiving weekend for Alabama State's homecoming. This Thursday, he'll speak at a celebration of the boycott, at Quinn Chapel AME Church in Chicago.
