As the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s right-hand man and most trusted friend, Rev Ralph Abernathy played a great role in the campaign for racial justice and equality.
He was the one King strategized with at night when the other aides were asleep. He accompanied King to Oslo to recieve the Nobel peace price , to the White House to meet president Lyndon , and the night King was assassinated they were together.
However despite his giant stature in the civil rights movement history has refused to accord him a place, instead treating him like a minor footnote.
Abernathy, who died in 1990, has never been forgiven for writing about the dalliances of an unfaithful King. For destroying the perfect-man myth.
In his autobiography published in 1989 , Abernathy wrote that after King delivered his famous “Mountaintop” speech — the one that predicted his own death the next day — he spent part of the night with another woman, and maybe a second one.
Although there were already whispers about King’s various escapades with women , they were mostly treated as rumours propagated by the CIA. But with King’s close friend confirming the same , there was no other reason to doubt.
In a way , Abernathy’s account gave comfort to the civil rights movement’s enemies, who were ready use anything to discredit the movement
Critics said, Abernathy had stabbed his dead friend in the back and sold him out in exchange for a book contract.
With criticism piling against him, Abernathy defended himself by saying that he agonized over whether to include the account, but reasoned that the book would be more credible if it included it.
He added it was also important to de-sanctify the person he knew as a man. It’s important, he said, to know that King had frailties and faults like any other human being. He made mistakes, like all great leaders have, in and out of the Bible.
How would you judge Abernathy ?
