Ralph Abernathy Quotes
You may be assured that we won't ever let your words die. Like the words of our Master, Jesus Christ, they will live in our minds and our hearts and in the souls of black men and white men, brown men and yellow men as long as time shall last.
Abernathy, Ralph. Eulogy for Martin Luther King Jr. 9 Apr. 1968. Quoted in The New York Times, 10 Apr. 1968, p. 32.
Religious and ethnic political conflict had broken out in Fiji. Some in the Christian majority strove to make Fiji officially a “Christian country” and marginalize the Indian Hindu minority. The archbishop opposed and thwarted them.
Ralph David Abernathy Sr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was ordained in the Baptist tradition in 1948. As a leader of the civil rights movement, he was a close friend and mentor of Martin Luther King Jr. He collaborated with King to create the Montgomery Improvement Association, which led to the Montgomery bus boycott. He also co-founded, and was an executive board member, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He became president of the SCLC following the assassination of King in 1968, where he led the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C., among other marches and demonstrations for disenfranchised Americans. He also served as an advisory committee member of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).