Hazel Robinson Gregory, former secretary-clerk of the Montgomery Improvement Association and one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assistants during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-1956, died last week in Montgomery.  She was 90.

Born to Nelson and Sadie Robinson in Montgomery County, Alabama on 8 July 1920, Gregory attended the Calhoun School, a private boarding school in Calhoun, Alabama, before finishing her higher education at Alabama State Laboratory High in Montgomery.  She married Frank Gregory, Sr. in 1940 with whom she had five children.

Gregory is most remembered for her role with the MIA during Montgomery’s famed bus boycott. Former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, remembered that during the boycott Gregory was “right smack in the middle of its vitality, its astuteness and dedication to the goals of liberty and human dignity” as she ran the office and acted as a friend and counselor to the participants.  She was especially helpful for the youth participants like Doris Dozier Crenshaw who said she and other youth activists “looked to Mrs. Gregory for instruction and support.”

Although she ultimately left the MIA after the boycott’s successful conclusion and King’s departure for Atlanta, Gregory remained active in the civil rights struggle spreading across the American South.  When the Freedom Riders were attacked at the Montgomery bus depot in 1961 it was Gregory who led the hearses of local undertakers to the violent scene to transport the injured activists to St. Jude Hospital.

Since leaving the MIA, Gregory spent ten years working for the Alabama State Prison Department and twelve years with the Montgomery Board of Education where she served as the assistant to the Director of the Department of Finance before retiring in 1988 to care for family members, something not surprising to those who remember her.  “Mrs. Gregory was always there for her people—especially her family,” recalls Crenshaw.  “She was always there for everybody—from Dr. King to the maids.”