to BiographyMartin Luther King Jr.
History is often a string of coincidences. One can wonder what role Martin Luther King Jr. would have played in the civil rights movement if he did not have the opportunity to speak the first evening of the boycott, or if Rosa Parks had chosen a row farther back from the outset, or if she had missed the bus altogether.
On the afternoon of December 5th, 1955, the black leaders of the community held a meeting and formed the M.I.A (Montgomery Improvement Association). The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was elected as president of this organization because he was new to the community and so he didn't have any enemies.
Martin Luther King's first landmark speech was his address to the First Montgomery Improvement Association's (MIA) Mass Meeting on December 5, 1955. Rosa Parks, in her introduction to Dr. King's speech in the book, A Call to Conscience, identifies this day as one of her most "memorable and inspiring" days and as the "beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement that influenced freedom revolutions around the world." Dr. King had 20 minutes to prepare this important speech, in which he talked about the buses Montgomery's black citizens had experienced leading up to the boycott and why it was so important to win the struggle. He spoke of the boycott being a "patriotic protest" and stressed the necessity for nonviolence and "rooting our protest in the teachings of Jesus Christ" while staying determined to win the boycott. Mrs. Parks new they had found their "Moses" and that he would "lead us to the promised land of liberty and justice for all.
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