her friends to produce entire meals, including chicken dinners, cakes, and pies to sell to the boycotters. The women sold on the east and west side of Montgomery, and had white clientele that knowingly and unknowingly bought food from them. The money from these sales went toward helping the Montgomery Improvement Association and to sustain the carpool system, a backbone of the MIA's strategy to sustain the boycott. Gilmore dubbed her group "the Club from Nowhere" to ensure the anonymity of the members as well as contributors (some of whom were known as white). In an effort to avoid any conflict, Gilmore established herself as the only officer in the Club from Nowhere. Members gave her all the money they made, and she donated the money to the MIA at weekly mass meetings. The club soon began raising hundreds of dollars a week by selling their meals out of beauty parlors, laundromats, and other locations frequented by both boycotters and supporters of the movement and they would present their weekly gains at the meetings to the applause of the audience. Gilmore hoped that the success of the group had encouraged other "ordinary folks" to do the same. This organization and others like it are cited by some as what kept the boycott alive by providing money as well as grass-roots support within the community. Significance Gilmore and the Club from Nowhere showed how extensively African-American women aided the bus boycott, both in their financial contributions and in their commitment to the boycott . The club prompted the creation of a sister organization the Friendly Club, started by Inez Ricks, that also helped fund-raising for the MIA. Her son Mark later stated that she had "elevated her day-to-day work—doing the cooking—into something greater." In a 1986 interview, Gilmore credited African-American women with being a driving force behind the boycott's success, saying, "you see they were maids, cooks. And they was the one that really and truly kept the bus running." Gilmore v. City of Montgomery (1959 and 1974) 1959 In 1957, Georgia Gilmore’s son Mark was arrested and beaten by two white police officers while taking a shortcut through Oak Park, a park that was for white-only at the time. African Americans had been prohibited by local ordinance from using public parks and recreational facilities. Gilmore was the lead plaintiff in Gilmore v. City of Montgomery (1959), which fought the charges