Ralph David Abernathy

ABERNATHY, RALPH DAVID

In the long battle for CIVIL RIGHTS, few leaders have had as an important a role as Ralph David Abernathy. From the late 1950s until 1968, Abernathy was the right-hand man of MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Together in 1957 they founded the SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE (SCLC), the organization chiefly responsible for the nonviolent protest movement whose gains over the next decade included major legal and social reforms for black Americans. Abernathy often shared a place next to King in meetings, marches, and jail, yet despite his considerable contributions to the CIVIL
RIGHTS MOVEMENT, he labored largely in King’s shadow. Later becoming SCLC president, he watched the transformation of the movement as his influence weakened and his politics changed, until controversy ultimately divided him from its mainstream.

Born on March 11, 1926, in Marengo
County, Alabama, Abernathy was the grandson
of a slave. His family members were successful
farmers, and his father’s leadership in the
county’s black community inspired him. Upon
graduating from Linden Academy, he served in
the army in WORLD WAR II. He was ordained as
a Baptist minister in 1948. He earned a B.A. in
mathematics from Alabama State College in
1950, an M.A. in sociology from Atlanta Uni-
versity in 1951, and later a law degree from Allen
University in 1960.

The defining moment in Abernathy’s life
was meeting King. As a student in Atlanta, he
had heard King preach in church. From there,
they began a friendship that would shape both
men’s futures. In 1955, while both were pastors
in Montgomery,Alabama, they began the first of
many local protest actions against RACIAL DIS-
CRIMINATION. They organized a boycott of city
buses by black passengers that led to the success-
ful desegregation of local bus lines one year
later. To build on this triumph, the pastors called
a meeting of black leaders from ten southern
states in January 1957 at an Atlanta church. This
meeting marked the founding of the SCLC,
which was devoted to the goal of furthering civil
rights throughout the south. King was
appointed the group’s president, Abernathy its
secretary-treasurer. The civil rights movement
had begun.

Although the SCLC had committed itself to
nonviolent protest, the forces they opposed were
far from gun-shy. Segregationists bombed Aber-
nathy’s home and church. As opposition from
individuals as well as government and law
enforcement mounted, Abernathy continued to
stress nonviolence. He said, “violence is the
weapon of the weak and nonviolence is the
weapon of the strong. It’s the job of the state
troopers to use mace on us. It’s our job to keep
marching. It’s their job to put us in jail. It’s our
job to be in jail.”

For nearly a decade, this philosophy was a
clarion call answered by thousands. Through sit down strikes, marches, arrests and jailings, and frequently at great personal danger, King and Abernathy led a mass of nonviolent protestersacross the south, working together to devisestrategy and put it into action. The enactment offederal civil rights legislation in 1964 marked amajor success. But tragedy followed with King’sassassination in May 1968, after which Abernathyreplaced him as SCLC president. He nowadded a new aggressiveness to the group’s goals,notably organizing a week-long occupation ofPotomac Park in Washington,D.C., by five thousandimpoverished tent-dwellers in what wascalled the Poor People’s Campaign. This effort todramatize poverty was quickly crushed by federallaw enforcement.By the end of the 1960s, Abernathy’s influencewas in decline. The civil rights movementhad splintered as younger, more militant membersgravitated toward groups such as the BLACKPANTHERS and the Committee on Racial Equality(CORE). In 1977, Abernathy was forcedfrom leadership of the SCLC amid a feud withKing’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and made anunsuccessful bid for Congress. In 1980, he supportedthe presidential campaign of conservativeRepublican RONALD REAGAN, which furtherdivided him from former friends and associates.References to Martin Luther King Jr.’s maritalinfidelities in Abernathy’s 1989 memoirAnd the Walls Came Tumbling Down provokedmore criticism. Politically and personally isolated,Abernathy died one year later of a heartattack on April 17, 1990, at the age of 64. Indeath, however, the criticism faded and was replaced by praise for his contributions to civil rights.

CROSS-REFERENCES

Civil Rights Movement; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; Southern Christian Leadership Conference.