Ralph Abernathy
Ralph David Abernathy Sr. (March 11, 1926 – April 17, 1990) was a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, a minister, and a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr.. In 1955, he collaborated with King to create the Montgomery Improvement Association, which led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1957, Abernathy co-founded, and was an executive board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Following the assassination of King, Abernathy became president of the SCLC. As president of the SCLC, he led the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C. during 1968. Abernathy also served as an advisory committee member of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). He later returned to the ministry, and in 1989 — the year before his death — Abernathy wrote, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: An Autobiography, a controversial autobiography about his and King’s involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
After the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, Abernathy (then a member of the Montgomery NAACP) collaborated with King to create the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Along with fellow English professor Jo Ann Robinson, they called for and distributed flyers asking the black citizens of Montgomery to stay off the buses. The boycott attracted national attention, and a federal court case that ended on December 17, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Browder v. Gayle, upheld an earlier District Court decision that the bus segregation was unconstitutional. The 381-day transit boycott, challenging the “Jim Crow” segregation laws, had been successful. And on December 20, 1956 the boycott came to an end.
As a result of the boycott on January 10, 1957, Abernathy’s home was bombed — his family was unharmed. Abernathy’s own First Baptist Church, Mt. Olive Church, Bell Street Church, and the home of Robert Graetz were also bombed on that evening, while King, Abernathy, and 58 other black leaders from the south were meeting at the Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration, in Atlanta.
On January 11, 1957, after a two-day long meeting, the Southern Leaders Conference on Transportation and Non-violent Integration, was founded. On February 14, 1957, the Conference convened again in New Orleans. During that meeting, they changed the group’s name to the Southern Leadership Conference and appointed the following executive board: King, President; Charles Kenzie Steele, Vice President; Abernathy, Financial Secretary-Treasurer; T. J. Jemison, Secretary; I. M. Augustine, General Counsel. On August 8, 1957 the Southern Leadership Conference held its first convention, in Montgomery, Alabama. At that time, they changed the Conference’s name for the final time to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and decided upon starting up voter registration drives for blacks across the south.
On May 20, 1961, the Freedom Riders stopped in Montgomery, Alabama while on their way from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, Louisiana to protest the still segregated buses across the south. Many of the Freedom Riders were beaten once they arrived at the Montgomery bus station, by a white mob, causing several of the riders to be hospitalized. The following night Abernathy and King set up an event in support of the Freedom Riders, where King would make an address, at Abernathy’s church. More than 1,500 people came to the event that night. The church was soon surrounded by a mob of white segregationists who laid siege on the church. King, from inside the church, called the Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and pleaded for help from the federal government. There was a group of United States Marshals sent there to protect the event, but they were too few in number to protect the church from the angry mob, who had begun throwing rocks and bricks through the windows of the church. Reinforcements with riot experience, from the Marshals service, were sent in to help defend the perimeter. By the next morning, the Governor of Alabama, after being called by Kennedy, sent in the Alabama National Guard, and the mob was finally dispersed. After the success of the Freedom Riders in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Huntsville in 1961, King insisted that Abernathy assume the Pastorate of the West Hunter Street Baptist Church in Atlanta, and Abernathy did so, moving his family from Montgomery, Alabama, in 1962.
The King/Abernathy partnership spearheaded successful nonviolent movements in Montgomery, Albany, Georgia, Birmingham, Mississippi, Washington D.C., Selma, Alabama, St. Augustine, Chicago, and Memphis. King and Abernathy journeyed together, often sharing the same hotel rooms, and leisure times with their wives, children, family, and friends. And they were both jailed 17 times together, for their involvement in the movement. Their work helped to secure the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the abolition of Jim Crow segregation laws in the southern United States.
Abernathy suffered bombings, beatings by southern policemen and State Troopers, 44 arrests, and daily death threats against his life and those of his wife and children. His family land and automobile were confiscated (his family had to re-purchase his automobile at public auction). Some of his colleagues and some volunteers in the civil rights movement who worked with him were murdered.
Content: Wikipedia
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