[1][2][3] Maude married Leonard Ballou, a music instructor who was a friend and fraternity brother of Martin Luther King Jr.

[4][2] There, Maude worked as program director at the first black radio station in Montgomery and Leonard taught music at Alabama State University.

[5] After arriving in Montgomery, Ballou joined the Women's Political Council and worked with Jo Ann Robinson on civil rights issues.

In an interview with The Washington Post, she recounted an encounter in which a man “said the White Citizens’ Council had sent him down there to tell me to stop working for civil rights or they would get my children.

[6] David Garrow, a historian of the Civil Rights era, noted Ballou's pivotal role in King's work: "You look through the papers of the Montgomery period, and up to 85 percent of the signatures are in Maude’s hand.