“We just like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free and have the same rights and privilege as anybody else.”

Rosa Parks, a black seamstress , is arrested after she refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus. Her arrest sparks a successful year-long boycott of the buses by blacks, led by Martin Luther King, JR. 1934In what’s then the Soviet Union, Communist official Sergei Kirov is assassinated in Leningrad, what’s now St. Petersburg, Russia. Kirov was an associate and potential rival of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who conducts a massive purge following the murder.

1963Beatlemania arrives in America as the Fab Four‘s first single I want to hold your hand is released in the US.

And 1935Actor and director, Woody Allen, whose films include Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters, is born in New York City.

Today in History, December 1st, Ed Donahue, the Associated Press.