Online Exhibits
The Montgomery Improvement Association
E. D. Nixon, Rev. Ralph Abernathy and Rev. Martin Luther King created the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) immediately following the arrest of Rosa Paks. Since Parks had been a member of the NAACP since 1943 and since she was well-known in the Montgomery African-American community, they felt enough people would rally to support a boycott or other protest. The MIA would become the organization that would orchestrate most boycott activities during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. About 5,000 attendees at the first meeting on December 5th support a non-violent approach to protest. They decided to ask not for an end segregation, but for improved conditions for African-American bus riders.
Alabama Department of Archives and History Public Information Subject Files - General File, Bus Boycott, SG6945, folder 305b.
Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama.
"Negores Most Urgent Needs" by the Montgomery Improvement Association.
Courtesy, Inez Jessie Baskin Papers, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama.