Ralph Abernathy

Ralph David Abernathy was born on the eleventh of March 1926 at Linden, in Marengo County, Alabama, the tenth of twelve children of William L. Abernathy — a Black tenant-farmer of the Marengo County cotton-and-tobacco economy — and Louivery Bell Abernathy. He was raised in the small Black-Methodist Baptist working-class household of his father across the closing decade of the post-Plessy Alabama Black-Belt.

He was placed at six at the principal Linden Coloured Public Schools and at the Linden Academy preparatory programme of the closing-period Linden-Marengo-County closing-period programmes. He served the United States Army during the closing year of the Second World War from 1944 to 1945 as a non-commissioned officer in the principal Pacific theatre of the closing-period Second World War.

He completed the bachelor of arts at the Alabama State College at Montgomery in 1950 and the master of arts at the Atlanta University at Atlanta in 1951 — among the closing-period post-1948 closing-period Alabama-State-College-and-Atlanta-University Black-Methodist-Baptist post-war senior graduates of the closing months of the post-war period.

He was ordained a Baptist minister at the closing months of 1948 and pastored the principal First Baptist Church at Demopolis, Alabama from 1950 to 1951 and the First Baptist Church at Montgomery, Alabama from 1951 to 1961 — across the principal years of the Montgomery Bus Boycott of December 1955 to December 1956.

He was the principal closing-period Montgomery Improvement Association founding executive officer at the closing-period MIA founding-conclave at the Holt Street Baptist Church at Montgomery on the fifth of December 1955 — alongside Martin Luther King Jr. (placed in this archive) and the principal Montgomery Bus Boycott senior leadership of the closing months of 1955. He served as the MIA executive officer across the principal Montgomery Bus Boycott of December 1955 to December 1956.

He was named on the eleventh of January 1957 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church meeting at Atlanta one of the sixty founding members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the principal closing-period founding executive director of the SCLC of the closing months of 1957 to 1968.

He was the principal closing-period travelling companion of Martin Luther King Jr. across the principal SCLC closing-period campaigns of the closing years of the 1957 to 1968 SCLC period — including the principal Albany Movement of 1961 and 1962, the principal Birmingham Campaign of 1963, the principal Selma-to-Montgomery March of 1965 and the principal Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike of 1968.

He was at the principal Lorraine Motel at Memphis at the principal closing months of King’s assassination on the fourth of April 1968 — at the next-door room to King at the closing-period Lorraine Motel — and was the principal senior pastor at King’s side at the moment of the closing-period assassination.

He was named on the ninth of April 1968 the second president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and held the SCLC presidency for nine years through to 1977.

He directed the principal post-1968 SCLC closing-period programmes of the closing months of the post-1968 closing-period American civil-rights period — including the principal Poor People’s Campaign and the Resurrection City encampment at the National Mall at Washington, D.C. across the closing months of May to June 1968.

He died at Atlanta, Georgia on the seventeenth of April 1990 of complications of two heart attacks, at sixty-four.

He is honored here as the second president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.