He moved on to Boston College where he took on the idea of "Personalism", i.e. the sanctity of the individual. .
During this time, a man named Reverend William Holmes Borders influenced King. He admired the Reverend Borders, who had built Wheat Street Baptist Church into Atlanta's largest black church and who possessed the academic credentials that King's own father lacked. Although both ministers had struggled from poverty to graduate from Morehouse College, Borders had also obtained a divinity degree from Garrett Theological Seminary and a master's degree from Northwestern before returning to Atlanta, where he taught religion at Morehouse and became an outspoken preacher at Wheat Street. According to biographer Taylor Branch, King and his friends studied "Borders' mannerisms, his organizational style, and above all the high-toned sermons in which he aroused his congregation without merely repeating the homilies of eternal life." This would begin to shape the all to familiar style of King's speeches and his ability to deliver them with power and intensity.1 .
On December 5, 1955 King began to be significant in the changing of the lives of all African Americans. The situation would begin after a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat on a bus to a white man on December 1st. Two police officers took her away to the police station where she was arrested. "King and 50 other ministers held a meeting and agreed to start a boycott of the bus lines on December 5th, the day of Rosa Parks' hearing" (MLK). This boycott would probably be successful since 70% of the riders were black. The bus company did not take the threat seriously, because if there were bad weather, they would have to take the bus. The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was established to co-ordinate the boycott. They had a special agreement with black cab companies, in which they were allowed to get a ride for a much cheaper price than normal.