Montgomery Improvement Association
Under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Edgar Nixon, the MIA was instrumental in guiding the Montgomery bus boycott by setting up the car pool system that would sustain the boycott, negotiating settlements with Montgomery city officials, and teaching nonviolence classes to prepare the African American community to integrate the buses.
[1][2] Following Rosa Parks's arrest on December 1, 1955 for failing to vacate her seat for a white passenger on a Montgomery city bus, Jo Ann Robinson of the Women's Political Council and E. D. Nixon of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) launched plans for a one-day boycott of Montgomery buses on December 5, 1955, the following Monday.
Ralph Abernathy, Jo Ann Robinson, E. D. Nixon, Rufus Lewis and other prominent figures also helped guide the MIA at King's side.
However, the main source of its funding came locally, as the members of the African American community in Montgomery gave money regularly at weekly mass meetings.
[20] Thus, despite the Supreme Court's decision in Browder v. Gayle, the MIA was initially willing to accept a compromise that was consistent with separate but equal rather than complete integration.
Howard of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, had spoken in Montgomery as King's guest at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church only days before Parks's arrest.
[27] Finally, these demands culminated in MIA attorney Fred Gray, along with help from the legal division of the NAACP, issuing Browder v. Gayle, a lawsuit fully challenging the constitutionality of segregation on Montgomery buses.
To achieve this, the MIA led nonviolent training sessions in churches and high schools every week to prepare the members of the community to face potential backlash.
[31][32] Though these threats did not end the MIA or the boycott, they did cause some damage by almost forcing the former's leaders, particularly King, to abdicate and even, in the case of Robert Graetz, move out of Montgomery entirely.
[36][37] The potentially most disastrous court order against the MIA, though, was on November 5, 1956 when Montgomery filed an injunction to end the organization's car pool system.
[38] However, the boycott was still able to be successful because, before the injunction could be officially ordered, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public transportation was unconstitutional in Browder v. Gayle on November 13, 1956.
Fields was the original recording secretary for the organization, but he was not re-elected to this office when the MIA became permanent due to the fact that, as a college student and pastor, he frequently did not attend the mass meetings.
The MIA did this by creating a ten-point plan for civic uplift entitled “Looking Forward,” starting when King still led the organization, which advocated for things such as increased voter registration and improved education and health standards.
[46][47] The modern organization meets monthly and focuses on community service, an annual scholarship, honoring the boycott, and overseeing the creation of civil rights museums and memorials.
