Ralph Abernathy

American civil rights leader

• Born: March 11, 1926
• Birthplace: Near Linden, Marengo County, Alabama
• Died: April 17, 1990
• Place of death: Atlanta, Georgia

Abernathy, one of the greatest African American civil rights leaders of the twentieth century, led the Montgomery bus boycott with Martin Luther King, Jr., helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and organized the Poor People’s Campaign after King’s assassination.

Early Life

Ralph Abernathy (AB-ur-na-thee) was the son of William L. Abernathy and Louivery (Bell) Abernathy. He was one of twelve children in the Abernathy family and the grandson of a slave. Abernathy’s early years were spent on the family farm, where he learned hard work and dedication from his father. William was an influential figure in his son’s life. As the leader in the rural community of Linden, William served on the school board and was the first African American to serve on a jury in the county, according to later interviews given by his son. Abernathy recalled that his father was a tall, handsome man. Abernathy himself grew into a stocky man of five feet eight inches, weighing about 185 pounds.

Abernathy served overseas in the U.S. Army during World War II. This experience provided him with firsthand knowledge of segregation, since black soldiers were routinely treated as second-class citizens. However, his time in the Army also gave him access to the G.I. Bill. Through the money provided for education by the government, Abernathy was able to earn a bachelor of science degree in mathematics from Alabama State College in 1950. He had already achieved his first goal in 1948 when he was ordained a Baptist minister. By 1951 Abernathy had completed a master’s degree in sociology from Atlanta University. In the same year, he became the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

While he was a graduate student in Atlanta, Georgia, Abernathy made the acquaintance of Martin Luther King, Jr. , at a service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King’s father served as pastor. The friendship grew when King was appointed pastor of the Dexter Avenue Church in Montgomery in 1954. The bond between King and Abernathy remained strong for the remainder of King’s life.

Life’s Work

Abernathy first rose to prominence for his role in the 1955-1956 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott . At the time, all buses in Montgomery had segregated seating: All African Americans were expected to sit at the rear of the bus. Whites and blacks were forbidden by law to sit next to each other or in the same parallel row. In addition, if there were no seats when a white person got on the bus, African Americans had to give up their seats for the white person.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress, was on her way home from work. She was tired, and her shoulders and neck hurt from working all day. When a white man got on the full bus, she refused to give up her seat. She was immediately arrested. The arrest mobilized the Montgomery African American leaders. Abernathy, a young but widely known minister, joined forces with the leaders the day after Parks’s arrest. He immediately began planning a bus boycott as a nonviolent way of protesting the arrest. The reasoning behind the boycott was clear: The Montgomery bus company depended on its riders for income, and the vast majority of riders were African American. Therefore, if African Americans refused to ride the buses, they would hurt the company that enforced the laws of segregation.

At the same time, Abernathy suggested to fellow strategist Edward Nixon that King be included in their group. King’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church served as the headquarters and meeting place for the organizers. Abernathy, King, and Nixon, with other African American leaders, formed a group called the Montgomery Improvement Association to oversee the boycott. Plans for the boycott were finalized, and the protest was scheduled to begin on Monday, December 5, 1955, the day of Parks’s trial. The organizers had hoped that most African Americans would not ride the buses, but they could not have predicted that the buses would remain 90 percent empty throughout the day.

What started as a one-day protest grew into a year-long struggle. Abernathy and King emphasized the nonviolent nature of the protests. For one year, black citizens shared rides, walked to work, and found alternative means of transportation, shunning the city’s nearly empty buses. During this time, black drivers and pedestrians were constantly harassed by police for real or imagined infractions; King himself went to jail when charged with driving thirty miles per hour in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour zone. Further, many African American leaders were arrested under an old antiboycott law. However, King was the only one who was brought to trial.

On November 13, 1956, at King’s trial, word came from Washington, D.C., that the U.S. Supreme Court had decided that Alabama’s bus segregation laws were unconstitutional. Finally, on December 21, 1956, more than one year after Parks’s arrest, Abernathy and King rode on the first integrated bus in Montgomery.

In January, 1957, Abernathy, King, and African American leaders from other southern states met at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to form a group that would coordinate existing protest groups and spread bus actions throughout the South. Known initially as the Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation, this group soon took the name Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and became one of the most important civil rights organizations in the country.

The Supreme Court’s decision and the formation of the SCLC, however, led to violence in Montgomery. Abernathy’s home and church, along with King’s home and four additional homes, were bombed. The violence did not deter Abernathy and King from pursuing their goal of nonviolent protest. They organized sit-ins, marches, and voter-registration drives in cities such Selma and Birmingham, Alabama; St. Augustine, Florida; and Albany, Georgia, in their quest to desegregate the South. They were thrown in jail at least seventeen different times. Abernathy eventually gave up his church in Montgomery so that he could move to Atlanta to be closer to the SCLC headquarters. His ties to King became increasingly tight, and most acknowledge that Abernathy was King’s closest friend and adviser. In 1965 Abernathy became the vice president of the SCLC at King’s request.

In 1967 Abernathy and King turned their attention to the economic condition of most African Americans. In spite of great gains in legal rights, a disproportionate number of African Americans still lived in poverty. Even worse, as industry turned increasingly toward automation, many workers were being put out of their jobs. In response, King and Abernathy began planning the Poor People’s Campaign, which they envisioned as a large-scale demonstration to be held in Washington, D.C. Although the campaign was scheduled to begin in March, 1968, King instead went to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of garbagemen on strike for higher wages. While there, he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, just outside the motel room he and Abernathy shared.

Abernathy became the new president of the SCLC on April 5, 1968, a role he fulfilled until 1977. As leader of the SCLC, he continued King’s plans for the Poor People’s Campaign and a march on Washington. King’s death spurred many to volunteer for the march. Beginning in May, 1968, hundreds of protestors arrived in Washington and built a town of huts and shacks on federal land near the Lincoln Memorial. Dubbed Resurrection City, the shantytown finally housed about 2,500 people. During the weeks of the campaign, Abernathy met with legislators and detailed the protestors’ demands. On June 19, a large rally was held in support of legislation to end poverty. Some estimates put the total crowd at fifty thousand people. On June 24, 1968, when their permit expired, the demonstrators were forcibly evicted by the National Guard. Abernathy resisted the eviction and was put in jail.

Abernathy continued to lead the SCLC until 1977, when he resigned under pressure from other leaders. He decided to run for Congress but was unsuccessful in his bid. During the following years, he worked on his autobiography, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down , published in 1989. While the book offered readers an inside look at the Civil Rights movement, many were puzzled by Abernathy’s allegations that King had engaged in extramarital affairs. The charges cast a pall over the book and Abernathy’s last years. After a long career as a minister and fighter for civil rights, Abernathy died in Atlanta on April 17, 1990.

Significance

Abernathy was at the heart of the Civil Rights movement, which lasted from 1954 to 1968. He was instrumental in assembling the talent needed for leadership in the Montgomery bus boycott and may have been partially responsible for bringing his friend, Martin Luther King, Jr., into the struggle. Perhaps Abernathy’s greatest contribution to the movement was the counsel, advice, and friendship he gave King during the years when they led the SCLC together.

By all accounts, Abernathy did not have the poise or charisma that King had, and he remained overshadowed by King throughout his life. Even after King’s death, he was subjected to comparisons with the fallen leader. Nevertheless, Abernathy’s role at a crucial time in race relations in the United States was an important one, for even from the shadows, he worked to effect permanent change.

Bibliography

Abernathy, Donzaleigh. Partners to History: Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, and the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Crown, 2003. Abernathy’s youngest daughter recounts how her father and King worked together in the Civil Rights movement, chronicling the Montgomery bus boycott, March on Washington, and other movement activities.

Abernathy, Ralph David. And the Walls Came Tumbling Down. New York: Harper & Row, 1989. Abernathy’s autobiography is an important book that offers readers insight into Abernathy’s understanding of his own position within the King circle. Unfortunately, Abernathy’s decision to include material concerning King’s alleged extramarital affairs overshadowed the rest of the book for most reviewers.

Garrow, David J. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. New York: William Morrow, 1986. In this exhaustively researched 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography, Garrow provides the benchmark biography of King. At the same time, he provides a close look at the founding and growth of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an important topic for any Abernathy student.

Kasher, Steven. The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History, 1954-68. New York: Abbeville, 1996. As the title suggests, this book is filled with stunning photographs of the Civil Rights movement. However, the book is also rich with well-documented text and a selected bibliography that will be invaluable to any student of the movement or Abernathy’s life.

Murray, Paul T. The Civil Rights Movement: References and Resources. New York: G. K. Hall, 1993. An extremely useful book for any student who wants to know more about the movement and Abernathy. Contains bibliographic information for further study.

Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987. The memoir of the founder of the Women’s Political Council, one of the leading civil rights organizations in Montgomery at the time of the boycott.

Williams, Juan. Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965. New York: Viking, 1987. Journalist Juan Williams offers a highly readable account of the Civil Rights movement. The book ends before the death of King and the ascendancy of Abernathy to the head of SCLC.

Young, Andrew. An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Young, a close associate of King and Abernathy and an early leader of the SCLC, provides another insight into the Civil Rights movement and its leaders.