Happy Birthday to civil rights activist, minister, and organizing leader Reverend Ralph Abernathy Sr. (b. March 11, 1926, in Linden, AL), who mentored and worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. One of Abernathy’s most notable contributions was his crucial leadership of the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. This shortly followed the assassination of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) leader King, leaving Abernathy to take the helm of the organization alongside the emergence of the Poor People’s Campaign. During the campaign, he advocated for mutual community support. He later reflected on these activities, writing: “We would set up a model for the rest of the nation to emulate. Everyone would live together in peace and mutual respect.” He viewed the Resurrection City that demonstrators built in the nation’s capital as “a new founding, the creation of a model for the just society. We would teach Americans how to live with each other in their own cities, and we would accomplish this by simplifying existence to the point where everyone could understand what was truly important and what was merely irrelevant and inconsequential.”
Citations: Warren K. Leffler, “[Reverend Ralph David Abernathy],” photograph (Washington, DC, June 14, 1968), https://lccn.loc.gov/2018664078; David L. Chappell, “Religious Revivalism in the Civil Rights Movement,” African American Review 36, no. 4, 583, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1512419; Lauren Pearlman, “More than a March: The Poor People’s Campaign in the District,” Washington History 26, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 25, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23937716; Ralph Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, Ralph David Abernathy: An Autobiography (New York: Harper Perennial, 1989), 502-503, https://archive.org/details/andwallscametumb00ralp.
Comments