MLK's first public Civil Rights Address: (1955) Martin Luther King Jr., “The Montgomery Bus Boycott”

In her book Carry Me Home, Diane McWhorter quotes from Martin Luther King's first address to the Montgomery Improvement Association. The speech is amazing to read because it hits many of the major themes he would repeat for the rest of his career.

(1955) Martin Luther King Jr., “The Montgomery Bus Boycott” | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed: The Montgomery Bus Boycott speech reprinted below is one of the first major addresses of Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King spoke to nearly 5,000 people at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery on December 5, 1955, just four days after Mrs. Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery city bus.