At the height of the Montgomery bus boycott, she became Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s first personal secretary. Maude Ballou was an unacknowledged heroine during the civil rights movement. Ballou, née Williams was born in Fairhope, Alabama – and raised in Mobile, Alabama. She attended Southern University (and A&M College) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration in 1947. In college she became a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. She met and married music instructor Leonard Ballou and they moved to Montgomery, Alabama in 1952. One settled, Ballou joined the Women’s Political Council. The council focused on discrimination based on race and making strides in social conditions for African-Americans. Her role included organizing carpools for working people during the Montgomery bus boycott. Ballou soon found herself at the persistence of Dr. King. At the time, she was already employed when he approached her several times, asking her to work for him. “I told him ‘no’ because I wanted to keep the job I had” she stated. Eventually, she became Dr. King’s secretary in December of 1955 after he became president of the Montgomery Improvement Association or MIA. She worked for Dr. King from 1955 to 1960, writing letters and responding to letters for him as a representative. Ballou also took care of his traveling schedule and helped him to stay on guard as a young preacher. In 1960 she joined Dr. King in Atlanta, Georgia to help him set up his new office as director with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), later that year she rejoined her family at their Petersburg, Virginia home. Outside of work duties, she and her husband were devoted friends that hung out with Dr. King and his wife Coretta Scott King. Ballou faced her own perils of uncertainty in the era of when homes belonging to civil rights activists and churches were frequently being bombed by the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists. She was listed No. 21 on a document spelling out people and churches most susceptible for attack. Ballou later remembered in an interview on some occasions she felt wary about strange cars parked outside her Montgomery office. After moving to Charlotte, North Carolina in the early 1970s, she took a position as assistant registrar at Elizabeth City State University. She later retired from being a CSM teacher at a middle school, remaining in a quiet neighborhood in the northern suburbs of Charlotte.

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