Dec. 20 (UPI) -- On this date in history:
In 1803, the United States formally took over territory acquired from France in the Louisiana Purchase.
In 1860, South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States.
In 1956, a Montgomery, Ala., public bus boycott officially ended but not until it had given a major boost to the civil rights struggle in the South. The boycott had been called in reaction to the Dec. 1, 1955, arrest of Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man.
Visitors to the St. Paul AME church in Montgomery, Ala., on October 29, 2005, line up to make a brief tour of a replica of the bus where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white male passenger in December of 1955. File Photo by John Dickerson/UPI
