Early Life
He was born March 11, 1926 to W. L. Abernathy on the family 500-acre (200 ha) farm in Linden, Alabama. After serving in the United States Army during World War II, he enrolled at Alabama State University. In 1951 he earned a Masters of Science degree in sociology from Atlanta University. As an officer of the Montgomery, Alabama NAACP, he organized the first mass meeting of the Montgomery Bus Boycott to protest Rosa Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955.
In the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, Abernathy was the young pastor of the largest black church First Baptist Church and a college professor, who, along with fellow English professor Jo Ann Robinson, called for and distributed flyers asking the Negro citizens of Montgomery to stay off of the buses for what would become the Montgomery Bus Boycott. At the end of the boycott, on January 10, 1957, Dr. Abernathy's church and his home (1327 South Hall Street) were bombed; his wife, Juanita, and infant daughter, Juandalynn, were unharmed.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said at the beginning of his last speech, "I've been to the mountain top," that "Ralph David Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world." They first met in Atlanta, while still in school, and formed a lifelong friendship and partnership that only ended with King's death on April 4, 1968.
Read more about this topic: Ralph Abernathy
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