Support: Local and Organizational

The civil rights movement in Montgomery grew from the support of organized groups and individual residents, with local citizens sustaining day-to-day efforts under guidance from local and national organizations. The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed in Montgomery at Mt. Zion AME Zion Church on December 5, 1955, by black ministers and community leaders. Under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Edgar Nixon, it guided the Montgomery bus boycott, the nonviolent protest campaign that first focused national attention on segregation and brought King into the national spotlight. The association used carpools and weekly gatherings with sermons and music to keep morale high, coordinated with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on legal challenges to the city's bus segregation ordinance, and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in January 1957. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the national Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, founded in 1960, brought different approaches to activism, and these newer groups, along with the Montgomery Improvement Association, relied on mass mobilization rather than litigation and legislation to advance the rights of black citizens. Together, organizations and individuals guaranteed the legacy of the movement.

Montgomery, Alabama · United States