Ralph Abernathy: Fighting the good fight

(Dr. Ralph David Abernathy, Sr.)

Dr. Ralph David Abernathy, Sr.’s father once told him:  If you see a good fight, get in it and fight to win it!  Abernathy’s biography is filled with evidence that he took these words to heart.

Abernathy, also a Baptist minister, was described by Martin Luther King, Jr. as “the best friend that I have in the world.”  Wikipedia reports that they were not only friends, but also civil-rights partners

who shared “the same hotel rooms, jail cells and leisure times…”  At the time that King was killed, Abernathy shared Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee with him.  They were both

there to support the on-strike sanitation workers of Memphis.  After King was shot, it was Abernathy who cradled him in his arms as King drew his last breaths.  It was also Abernathy who then led the

march for these same sanitation workers.

Abernathy and King had both been leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).   This organization had originally been formed in order to “coordinate and support nonviolent direct

action as a method of desegregating bus systems across the South.”  SCLC greatly struggled to gain initial momentum.  It was opposed by two polarized factions:  those who believed that social activism was beyond the purview of churches (and that churches should only be involved with “spiritual needs” and “charitable works”) - versus those who believed that SCLC wasn’t being militant enough.

In the course of his social-activist ministry, Abernathy had personally “endured with equanimity” bombings,

severe beatings, death threats against himself and his family, 44 arrests, murders of close companions, and

confiscation of his property.  Undaunted, Abernathy pressed bravely on in the mighty struggle for civil

rights.  The 1968 Poor People’s Campaign (which included “the nation’s poor Blacks, Latinos, Whites

and Native Americans”) was uplifted by his steadfast conviction that “the key to the salvation and redemption of this nation lay in its moral and humane response to the needs of its most oppressed and poverty-stricken citizens.”  

                  

Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Abernathy

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/memphis-v-mlk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Christian_Leadership_Conference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_People's_Campaign

Copyright March 14, 2012 by Linda Van Slyke