Dorothy Piedrahita, a 64-year-old Covington resident who was present when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech at the start of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1955 and who became the first black woman to run for mayor of Montgomery, will speak for free at the Newton County Public Library on Floyd Street at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

Piedrahita was raised in Chicago and Montgomery. She attended college at Alabama State University in the 1960s, where she organized student protests and helped stage sit-ins, as well as helping to organize student involvement in the march from Selma to Montgomery.

She came to Georgia in 1970 and worked with Pepsi Cola, Meals on Wheels and the Georgia Epilepsy Foundation. In 1996, she moved back to Alabama and then came to Conyers in 2005, eventually moving to Covington. She currently volunteers with the AARP and the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation.