[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 1]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 115]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   HONORING MAUDE L. WILLIAMS BALLOU

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, January 7, 2014

  Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a 
remarkable public servant, Mrs. Maude L. Williams Ballou, who was born 
in Fairhope, Alabama, and raised in Mobile. She received a Bachelor of 
Science in business administration in 1947 from Southern University in 
Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After marrying music instructor, Leonard 
Ballou, she and her husband relocated to Montgomery, Alabama in 1952. 
Mrs. Ballou met Jo Ann Robinson before the start of the bus boycott and 
talked with her about how to obtain better conditions for blacks in 
Montogmery.
  After Martin Luther King's election as president of the Montgomery 
Improvement Association (MIA) at the start of the Montgomery bus 
boycott, Maude Ballou became his personal secretary.
  After becoming King's secretary at the MIA, Mrs. Ballou helped 
coordinate carpools during the boycott. She often responded on King's 
behalf to his correspondence. Mrs. Ballou accompanied Dr. King when he 
moved to Atlanta in 1960, staying with the King family and assisting 
him in establishing his office at the Southern Christian Leadership 
Conference headquarters there. Mrs. Ballou left that summer to rejoin 
her family in Petersburg, Virginia, where her husband had accepted a 
position at Virginia State College.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing Mrs. Maude 
L. Ballou for her dedication to serving others.

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