http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/about_king/encyclopedia/MIA.html
MONTGOMERY IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION
The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was founded in Montgomery on 5 December 1955 to coordinate a burgeoning bus boycott. Organized by Montgomery ministers and community leaders, a young minister new to Montgomery, Martin Luther King, Jr. <temporary> was elected president. The MIA was instrumental in guiding the successful Montgomery bus boycott <temporary>, a campaign that focused national attention on Jim Crow in the South and catapulted King into the national spotlight. 
Following Rosa Parks' <parks_rosa.htm> arrest on 1 December for failing to vacate her seat for a white passenger on a Montgomery city bus, E. D. Nixon of the NAACP and Jo Anne Robinson of the Women's Political Council launched plans for a one-day boycott of Montgomery buses on 5 December. Ninety percent of the black community participated and stayed off the buses that day, prompting calls for boycott leaders to harness the momentum into a larger protest campaign. At a meeting that evening, the MIA was established to oversee the continuation and maintenance of the boycott and King was elected its president. MIA's mission extended beyond the boycott campaign, however, as it sought to "improve the general status of Montgomery, to improve race relations, and to uplift the general tenor of the community." 
After this initial meeting, the executive committee drafted the demands of the boycott campaign and agreed that the boycott would continue until demands were met. Over the next year, the MIA organized carpools and held weekly mass meetings with sermons and music to help keep the black community mobilized. The Association's leaders negotiated with Montgomery city leaders and coordinated legal challenges to the city's bus segregation ordinance. MIA also supported the boycott financially, raising money by passing the plate at meetings and soliciting support from northern and southern civil rights organizations. 
The boycott ended in success when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down segregated seating on public buses in November 1956. King emerged as a national figure and the MIA's tactics cast a mold for the many protests that would follow in the civil rights movement. The Montgomery victory affirmed the potential for mass-based nonviolent resistance <nonviolent.resist.html> to successfully challenge segregation. 
Following this success, the MIA was one of the founding organizations of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)  <temporary>in January 1957. The organization lost some vital momentum after King moved to Atlanta in 1960 but continued campaigns throughout the civil rights movement, focusing on voter registration, local school integration, and the integration of Montgomery parks. 
SOURCES 
Mary Fair Burks, "Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott," in Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse and Barbara Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1990) 
Clayborne Carson, Stewart Burns, Susan Carson, Peter Holloran & Dana L. H. Powell, eds., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume III: Birth of a New Age, December 1955-December 1956 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) 
Clayborne Carson, ed., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Warner Book, 1998) 
Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: the Montgomery Story (New York: Harper & Row, 1958) 
Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: The Free Press, 1994) 
Howell Raines, My Soul is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (New York: Puttnam, 1977) 
Jo Ann Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It (Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 1987) 
LINKS 
"MIA Mass Meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church," 12/5/55  <../../publications/papers/vol3/551205.004-MIA_Mass_Meeting_at_Holt_Street_Baptist_Church.htm>
"Statement of Negro Citizens on the Bus Situation," 12/10/55 <../../publications/papers/vol3/551210.001-Statement_of_Negro_Citizens_on_Bus_Situation.htm> 
"To the Montgomery Public," 12/15/55  <../../publications/papers/vol3/551225.002-To_the_Montgomery_Public.htm>
Interview with King by Donald T. Ferron, 02/4/56 <../../publications/papers/vol3/560204.003-Interview_by_Donald_T._Ferron.htm> 
"Quotable Quotes from Rev. King," 03/31/56 <../../publications/papers/vol3/560331.013-Quotable_Quotes_from_Rev._King.htm> 
"Address to MIA Mass Meeting at Day Street Baptist Church," 04/26/56 <../../publications/papers/vol3/560426.016-Address_to_mass_meeting_at_Day_Street_Baptist_Church.htm> 
Letter from King to Benjamin F. McLaurin,  <../../publications/papers/vol3/560506.001-Letter_to_Benjamin_F._McLaurin.htm>Montgomery Story," 06/56 <../../publications/papers/vol3/560600.000-The_New_Negro_of_the_South,_Behind_the_Montgomery_Story.htm> 
"The Montgomery Story," 06/27/56 <../../publications/papers/vol3/560627.003-The_Montgomery_Story,_Address_at_the_47th_Annual_NAACP_Convention.htm> 
"Address to MIA Mass Meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church," 11/14/56 <../../publications/papers/vol3/561114.013-Address_to_MIA_Mass_Meeting_at_Holt_Street_Baptist_Church.htm> 
"We Are Still Walking," 12/56 <../../publications/papers/vol3/561200.003-We_Are_Still_Walking.htm> 
Carson, The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume III <../../publications/papers/vol3/contents.htm> 
Carson, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Montgomery Movement Begins  <../../publications/autobiography/chp_7.htm>