[African-Americana] [Montgomery Bus Boycott] Group of 10 Documents Related to the Montgomery Improvement AssociationA Significant Collection Related to the Montgomery Improvement Association and Civil Rights Activists Alfonso and Lucy B. Campbell"The result of our determination to organize against these evils, particularly as they expressed themselves in bus segregation, was the Montgomery Improvement Association. Little did we know when we brought this organization into being that we were starting a movement whose influence would be felt in large cities and small villages of America, in the sunny climes of Africa, and the rich soils of Asia, indeed throughout the whole civilized world." -Martin Luther King, Fourth Anniversary of the Montgomery Improvement Association, December 3, 1959Montgomery, Alabama, 1956-61. Collection of 10 printed and mimeograph items related to the Montgomery Improvement Association and Civil Rights Activists Alfonso and Lucy B. Campbell. Size and condition vary.A significant collection related to Montgomery, Alabama civil rights activists Alfonso and Lucy B. Campbell, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Alfonso Campbell and Lucy Barnes met at Alabama State College (now Alabama State University) in the 1940s where Alfonso worked as Supervisor of Transportation and Lucy as a staff librarian. They married in Montgomery in 1946, and were raising two young children in 1954 when 25-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr., became the 20th Pastor of the prominent Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Respected members within theirmunity, when the Montgomery Bus Boycott began to take shape in the winter of 1955, the Campbells were among some of its early organizers that helped ensure its success.The idea of a mass demonstration to address the discrimination and violence faced by Montgomery's African Americanmunity had been brewing in the city for years prior to December 1955. Organizations including the Montgomery Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, the Women's Political Council (WPC), the Negro Improvement League, as well as the NAACP, among others--sometimes working in tandem--worked tirelessly to organizemunity action to seek justice. When the Campbell's friend Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955 for her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man, leading members of the African Americanmunity including Jo Ann Robinson (president of the WPC) and E.D. Nixon (president of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP) seized the moment to organize a mass protest. On Friday, December 2, the day following Parks's arrest, Robinson circulated a flyer within the African Americanmunity calling for a boycott of the city's buses the following Monday, December 5. That same Friday night a planning meeting was held at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church between these civic leaders and the city's Black clergy, and all agreed to support and publicize the boycott over the weekend. The