WLBT's Ballou recalls parents' friendship and work with MLK

With a business degree in hand, Maude Ballou moved to Montgomery, Alabama in the early 1950s with her husband Leonard and began work at a radio station. But she always hoped to help alleviate some of the challenges Black people were facing during that period of time.

She never expected her ideas, skills and hard work would help Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to change the world. In fact, one account of Maude said she “was literally changing diapers while helping to change a nation."

Her son, Howard Ballou, a 30-plus-year anchor at WLBT, the NBC affiliate in Jackson, recalls the days when Dr. King would sit in their kitchen and visit or work on organizing for hours on end.

"My dad and Dr. King were fraternity brothers (Alpha Phi Alpha at Morehouse College in Atlanta) and Dr. King discovered mom through dad," Howard Ballou said.

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At the time, the Ballous lived "in a place called Petal Street" in Montgomery, where Dr. King would come to visit on a regular basis. That is where Dr. King discovered Maude's innate ability to organize and get things done. She was working at a radio station, but there was more to come.

"He asked mom on several occasions if she would help him start the Montgomery Improvement Association so that they could address the segregation and busing situation and everything else that was going on," Ballou said.

Maude was born in Fairhope, Alabama, and raised in Mobile. She received a BS in business administration in 1947 from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After marrying Leonard, a music instructor, she and Leonard relocated to Montgomery in 1952.

After much coaxing and cajoling from Dr. King, Leonard and Maude finally relented and agreed to the proposal and Maude left the radio station.

"People just really respected her," Ballou said. "And she considered herself a Southern Belle, and she was pretty tough. She and Dr. King became great friends."

Her skills made an immediate impact on Dr. King and his every day life.

She managed his flights, booked the travel, took care of the meals and everything else in between," Ballou said.

And long before the days of having recording devices handy, Maude was an expert at shorthand and could take notes of Dr. King's meetings and conversations with amazing accuracy.

Dr. King's trust of Maude grew as she began to do a lot of research for the organization and ended up editing many of Dr. King's speeches over the years.

"Fortunately, Dr. King was a good listener and he took a lot of her suggestions to to heart," Ballou said. "He had a lot a lot of respect for Mom and it showed in a lot of documents and autographs that he signed or gave to her."

Leonard and Dr. King remained great friends throughout as Leonard referred to him as Mike.

"Mom called him Martin, but dad called him Mike as a lot of his close friends did," Ballou said. "Why, I don't know, but it is well documented that many of his friends called him Mike."

Ballou has been at WLBT since 1984 and is the former President of the local chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and is former Regional Director for the Society of Professional Journalists/Sigma Delta Chi. This is his second stint as primary anchor for the 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts at WLBT. He now anchors the 5pm newscast, as well. He also worked in broadcast journalism in Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina.

But he was very young when his parents were friends and colleagues with Dr. King.

"I don't remember a whole lot from being there," Ballou said. "I do remember mom dragging me to the office with her. But I was around 3 years old when they started the Montgomery Bus Boycott."

What he does remember vividly as a youngster is when his family's neighbor's home was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan.

"That was Rev. Ralph Abernathy that lived around the corner. Fortunately no one was harmed," Ballou said. "But I do remember that."

Ballou said that his brother, who is a little older and recalls a little more, loves to talk about that night.

"As the story goes, my mom ran upstairs where my oldest sister was. My sister asked my mom if the Russians had invaded," Ballou said laughing about the incident. "My mom was very calm and said that some bad people had done some bad things to our neighbors."

Maude also recounted about a time when she was leaving work and was approached by a member of the White Citizens Council. He threatened her for her work with Dr. King. At the time, Maude had three children and was pregnant with Ballou's younger sister.

"She said that scared her but it didn't work because she was committed to make the world a better place for her family and her children," Ballou said. "She was definitely determined and was the kind of person who had fierce work ethic."

In 1960, King brought Maude to Atlanta to help him open the headquarters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She stayed at the Kings’ home. It was there she drove up one night and saw two men in the front yard pouring fuel on a cross and lighting it.

For Ballou, he said that when MLK day comes around every year, it does spark memories of his mom and dad, much like their birthdays do. However, he said he is grateful for the time Maud and Leonard had with Dr. King before his death at the hands of James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis in 1968.

"It's amazing to think back, but no one thought anything different of Mom and Dad having Dr. King and other friends over to the house," Ballou said. "And our kitchen was really the first office for the MIA."

"It's definitely a time to reflect," Ballou said. "And with the way the world is now, it's almost like we have gone back to many of the ways things were but in a more modern and sophisticated way. However, I am the eternal optimist and I believe that good will triumph over evil. It always does."

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: WLBT TV's Howard Ballou recalls parents' friendship and work with MLK