User:Bradallenpowell/YMCA of Montgomery, Alabama

The YMCA in Montgomery, Alabama, was founded in 1868. Montgomery became the first city with a population of under one million to have branch locations when the East YMCA and the South YMCA both opened in 1958. The YMCA in Montgomery was long segregated; in fact, when the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) offered the YMCA a gift of $20,000 to build "a new Negro branch," the Montgomery YMCA's president, Royce Kershaw, wanted Martin Luther King, Jr., on behalf of the MIA, to sign "a document acknowledging that the organization 'is and will remain a segregated institution.'" The Montgomery YMCA was desegregated only after lawsuits were filed, in 1970.