Ralph Abernathy

The Abernathys owned their land, which in Marengo County, Alabama, in 1926 was rare enough to be a kind of standing. William Abernathy farmed 500 acres, was the first Black man to vote in the county and the first to sit on a grand jury there, and raised 12 children on it. Ralph was the 10th. He enlisted in the Army during the Second World War, made platoon sergeant, and came home to Alabama State on the G.I. Bill, where he ran a hunger strike over the campus food and took a degree in mathematics. Ordained in 1948, he was pastor of First Baptist Church in Montgomery by 1951, the largest Black congregation in the city. Martin Luther King Jr. arrived three years later.

When Rosa Parks was arrested in December 1955, Abernathy and King built the Montgomery Improvement Association around the response and ran the 381-day bus boycott from it. In January 1957, while the two were in Atlanta founding what became the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, segregationists bombed Abernathy's house and his church the same night. His family escaped unhurt. He kept going — Albany, Birmingham, St. Augustine, Selma, Memphis, and the jail cells. He and King were locked up 17 times together, and Bull Connor had them held apart in Birmingham, which is how King came to write the letter alone.

He took the SCLC presidency the day after the shooting — he had been feet away in the motel room — and inherited a campaign he had not designed. Resurrection City went up on the National Mall that May: plywood shanties, weeks of rain, standing water five inches deep, thin press coverage, and on June 24 more than a thousand police clearing the site. Abernathy was among the 288 arrested. The comparison to King ran under everything after that, and he resigned in 1977 with the SCLC in debt. In 1989 he published And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, describing King's extramarital relationships on his last night alive. Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young and more than two dozen other leaders condemned it at King's graveside. Abernathy said he was telling the truth about a friend he loved.

Two blood clots reached his heart and lungs on the morning of April 17, 1990, in Atlanta. He was 64. He had chosen the inscription for his tomb at Lincoln Cemetery: I TRIED. The book left him an outcast to many. The commemorations largely passed him over — his widow, Juanita, said in 2013 that the 50th anniversary program for the March on Washington had no place for him. Historians have moved the other way. The consensus now treats him not as King's aide but as a co-founder of the SCLC and the organizer inside a partnership the movement was built on, which is what King said about him from the podium in Memphis the night before he died.

Ralph Abernathy's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Montgomery Improvement Association other
  Co-founded with King and E. D. Nixon to run the bus boycott 1955
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference other
  Co-founder and its first financial secretary-treasurer 1957
• Resurrection City and the Poor People's Campaign other
  The encampment on the National Mall he inherited and led 1968
• Charleston hospital workers' strike other
  Local 1199B won a wage increase and better conditions for thousands 1969
• And the Walls Came Tumbling Down book
  The autobiography that cost him most of his standing in the movement 1989

• March 11, 1926 aged 0 Born on the family farm in Linden, Alabama The 10th of 12 children. His father owned 500 acres and was the first Black man to vote in Marengo County.
• 1951 aged ~25 Takes the pulpit at First Baptist Church in Montgomery The largest Black congregation in the city. He held it for 10 years.
• December 5, 1955 aged 29 Helps launch the Montgomery bus boycott He and King formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to run it. It lasted 381 days.
• January 10, 1957 aged 30 His house and his church are bombed while he is in Atlanta He was at the meeting that founded what became the SCLC. His family escaped unhurt.
• April 12, 1963 aged 37 Arrested with King in Birmingham on Good Friday Bull Connor called them the Gold Dust Twins and had them held apart. King dated his letter from that jail April 16.
• April 5, 1968 aged 42 Becomes president of the SCLC the day after King is killed He had been inside Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel when the shot was fired.
• June 24, 1968 aged 42 Police clear Resurrection City and arrest him with 288 others Six weeks of rain, mud and thin coverage. Most accounts have judged the campaign a failure.
• 1977 aged ~51 Resigns as president of the SCLC Nine years in the job, the organization in debt, and the comparison to King never gone.
• April 17, 1990 aged 64 Dies in Atlanta at 64 Two blood clots reached his heart and lungs.

• Martin Luther King Jr. 1929–1968
  Baptist minister and civil rights leader whose nonviolent activism ended legal segregation in America. closest ally
• Rosa Parks 1913–2005
  Civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her bus seat sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. organized around her arrest
• Fred Shuttlesworth 1922–2011
  Founder of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights co-founded the SCLC with
• Jesse Jackson 1941–2026
  Civil rights leader whose 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns expanded Black political participation. opposed by
• Coretta Scott King 1927–2006
  Civil rights organizer, peace activist, and founder of the King Center shared the platform with
• John Lewis 1940–2020
  Freedom Rider and congressman whose activism was central to the civil-rights movement and voting-rights legislation. marched with