ABERNATHY, RALPH DAVID (11 March 1926–17 April 1990), an American civil rights leader and Baptist minister. He was a close friend and mentor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Abernathy was born to a middle-class family in Alabama and served in the United States Army during the Second World War. Shortly after returning home, he was ordained and went on to complete his undergraduate studies at Alabama State University and his graduate studies in Sociology at Atlanta University. There, Abernathy met King. Working as a pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, Abernathy rose to prominence in the Civil Rights movement during the Montgomery Bus Boycotts of 1955. While King led the boycotts, Abernathy served as his chief assistant.
In January 1957, Abernathy joined King in forming the SCLC, serving as Secretary-Treasurer and later as Vice President. Headquartered in Atlanta, the SCLC played an essential role in protesting racial segregation in the South. Because of his civil disobedience, Abernathy spent many days in jail, oftentimes together with King. In Atlanta, Abernathy also served as Pastor of the West Hunter Street Baptist Church, and in 1967, he began planning the Poor People’s Campaign, a march for the poor in Washington, D.C. King, however, was assassinated in April 1968. With his death, Abernathy became President of the SCLC, continued King’s plan to support the sanitation worker strike in Memphis, and led the Poor People’s Campaign in May 1968.
The SCLC’s shift of focus—which began under Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—from racism in the South to racism and economic injustice across the nation was perhaps too radical in its time. Amid King’s assassination, the leadership change, and race riots, the Poor People’s Campaign is generally remembered to be a failure. Abernathy’s leadership within the SCLC in the following years was contentious, and by 1977, he left the organization. By the 1980s, his politics had taken a conservative turn. He supported and endorsed Ronald Reagan and, in 1987, joined the right-wing American Freedom Coalition. He died of heart failure on 17 April 1990. Despite his controversial career, Abernathy is remembered for his early leadership, activism, and perhaps less explicitly, his political work as a minister in his later life.