Montgomery Improvement Association

(noun)

An association formed on December 5, 1955 by black ministers and community leaders in Montgomery, Alabama. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Edgar Nixon, it was instrumental in guiding the Montgomery bus boycott, a successful campaign that focused national attention on racial segregation in the South and catapulted King into the national spotlight.

Related Terms

Examples of Montgomery Improvement Association in the following topics:

  • Montgomery and Protests

    • The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama.
    • The Montgomery Bus Boycott, a seminal episode in the U.S. civil rights movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama.
    • Washington High School in Montgomery.
    • French to name the association to lead the boycott (they selected the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to the city, and select King (Nixon's choice) to lead the boycott.
    • The Montgomery Bus Boycott resounded far beyond the desegregation of public buses.

  • The Rise of Garveyism

    • He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), and also founded the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement.
    • Washington, Martin Delany, and Henry McNeal Turner, which led him to organize the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica in 1914.

  • Marcus Garvey

    • He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), as well as the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement that promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands.
    • Washington, Martin Delany, and Henry McNeal Turner, led him to organize the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica in 1914.

  • Sit-Ins and Freedom Rides

    • The arrests brought a surge of media coverage to the sit-in campaign, including national television news coverage, front page stories in both of Nashville's daily newspapers, and an Associated Press story.
    • Freedom rides were stopped and beaten by mobs in Montgomery, leading to the dispatch of the Alabama National Guard to stop the violence.
    • On March 7, 1965, Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600 people to walk from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery.