A young Baptist pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr., was president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization that directed the boycott. The protest made King a national figure. King became the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) when it was founded in 1957. SCLC wanted to celebrate the NAACP legal strategy by encouraging the use of nonviolence. These activities included marches, demonstrations, and boycotts. The violent white response to black direct action eventually forced the federal government to confront the issues of injustice and racism in the South.