Rev. Ralph Abernathy: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Overlooked ‘Civil Rights Twin’

(RNS) In a scene in the movie “Selma,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sits in a jail cell wondering where the civil rights movement is headed. His cellmate, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy Sr., responds with a lesson from the Gospel of Matthew about the futility of worrying.

In real life, the two men — family and colleagues say — were inseparable. One man is honored with a national holiday that will be celebrated Monday (Jan. 19) while the other is frequently overlooked, even as he continued King’s plans for decades after King’s 1968 assassination.

“Ralph is the best friend that I have in the world,” King said of Abernathy when his colleague introduced him for what would be his last sermon, in Memphis, Tenn.

But Abernathy, who died in 1990 at age 64, was harshly criticized for writing in his autobiography, “And the Walls Came Tumbling Down,” about King’s marital infidelity. Abernathy’s family members believe that criticism contributed to efforts to “erase” him from the annals of civil rights history. His widow and his namesake son say the new movie does not fully depict the close partnership he had with King.

“They used to call them the civil rights twins — he and Dr. King,” recalled Terrie Randolph, who was Abernathy’s secretary when he became president of SCLC after King’s death. “You wouldn’t see one without the other and for any — not only major but minor — decision they consulted with each other.”

The younger Abernathy compared his “Uncle Martin” and his father to the biblical description of Jesus’ sending out the disciples “two by two.”

“You give Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson. You can even give Bobby Kennedy to John,” he said. “Black men came together that were not brothers, but were brothers in spirit.”

The Huffington Post