By Msgr. Noel C. Burtenshaw

Dr. Ralph David Abernathy remembers his beginning days with Martin Luther King, Jr. There was some fury and some fun in those days back in 1951.

“I was a student at Atlanta University,” recalls the pastor of West Hunter Street Baptist Church in Westend Atlanta. “Martin was a student in Boston. I heard about his preaching, so one Sunday in August 1951, I took the segregated bus from Atlanta University to Ebenezer Baptist Church.”

When Ralph Abernathy says “segregated bus” in his comfortable study, visitors in the office waiting room know he has said it. He utters that phrase like a man who has suffered through the ignominy. And he has.

“Martin’s father had allowed him to preach for the summer. Already the young preacher was getting a name as a speaker. I was glad to hear him.”

On that hot Atlanta Sunday morning the young King gave his sermon to the congregation on faith. As Ralph – then 23 – left the church he met Martin, who was 22, face to face for the first time. That August meeting, although these young black ministers did not then know it, would be the beginning of an adventure that would move the entire world to stop and gaze with amazement.

Although they met at Ebenezer on that Sunday, it would be Wednesday before they spoke. “Our first words were not the friendliest,” said Dr. Abernathy with a grin. “I was dating this young lady and had planned to take her to a play at Sister’s Chapel on Wednesday night. Well she called me and broke our date saying she did not feel too well. For some reason I went over to Sister’s Chapel anyway and while standing outside before the play along comes Dr. King and on his arms was my date.”

“As you can imagine,” says the famous Atlanta pastor, “I was not too happy and was about to say so. However, Dr. King came over and said he recalled me from the service on the previous Sunday. I suppose his words helped ease my resentment. But I must say, I never got my date back. But she dropped him too.”

Two years later the two ministers would meet again. This time Dr. Abernathy was pastor of First Baptist in Montgomery and the young Reverend King was applying as minister at Dexter Avenue Baptist in the same city.

“The first day he came to Montgomery,” said Dr. Abernathy, “he had dinner in my house. I hoped he would stay in Montgomery and recommended him for the Dexter Avenue Church.”

“We became fast friends in this way. The only integration in Montgomery at the time was 15 minutes each Sunday. A black preacher was allowed to enter the all white Jefferson Davis Hotel, go through the lobby and climb the back stairs to a radio station. I remember it was March and it was my turn. I preached on hope. Dr. King heard it and called me. He wanted to get together. We did and we never really were apart after that until he died.”

Dr. King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and his friendship with Ralph Abernathy deepened.

They talked every thing but mostly they talked freedom. There was no public place to go in Montgomery on evenings off because it was a totally segregated city. “There were no nice restaurants where we could go, so we went to each other’s homes. There we planned and dreamed.”

Dr. King had heard Dr. Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University, speak about the exploits of Gandhi and his non-violent revolution. “That’s the way he wanted our freedom to come,” said Dr. Abernathy. “It would be a non-violent revolution.”

But it was all only talk. Ralph Abernathy wanted to finish his degree. Martin King wanted to pastor his people. The action for freedom was on a schedule down the road, in the distance, up ahead.

But the scheming pastors did not count on one Rosa Parks. She had her own schedule. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move when ordered to do so from a “white” seat on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested; the Montgomery bus boycott began. The rest is history.

“We were wrong on all counts,” said Ralph Abernathy. “We wanted to do it later, Rosa said “now.” We thought the boycott would last four days, it went 381. We only wanted “improved segregation” the people wanted it ALL.”

King and Abernathy and their organization merely asked for more courtesy from the drivers, move black employees and an equal amount of spaces on each bus. “We wanted half black seating starting from the back of the bus and half white starting from the front. We did not ask for integration. The bus company said no. The people were ready. The civil rights revolution began.”

Out of the Montgomery movement the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was born. Other organizing ministers in the south joined them and the march for freedom across the south and north was in full swing.

The highlight of those years was the signing of the voting rights bill by President Johnson. “We were marching in Selma,” says Ralph Abernathy, “and as the President signed the bill he mentioned our freedom song. He said at one point ‘We shall overcome.’ It was wonderful.”

The worst moment for the leaders was the jail in Birmingham, Alabama. “When they put us in jail there, they separated us knowing that we found strength in each other. I always had my small Bible with me and I would read our favorite passages especially Psalm 27, ‘The Lord is my life and my salvation.’ That was a favorite of his. In Birmingham it was hard being separated.”

When Dr. Ralph Abernathy speaks about the system of segregation he speaks with bitter words. “It was cruel,” he says. “It demeaned human beings. Simple ordinary things were denied to you. If you tried on a pair of shoes, you had to buy them even if they were a size too small. You could not try on a hat without buying it. Colored drinking fountains were always dirty and never maintained. When they broke nobody fixed them. And of course, that was all we had. There was no using white accommodations. There was no using their bathrooms, restaurants, theatres, buses – unless we did so in special designated seats. It was cruel.”

When the name of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is mentioned it always is linked with Ralph David Abernathy. The sufferings of both were great and the victories of these leaders were historic. “I am so glad the birthday has become a holiday,” says Dr. Abernathy as he generously takes time from his busy pastoral day to give interviews. “But I am sad that I am not a member of the holiday commission. Martin and I were closer than anyone else in the movement.”

Are his marching days over? “Oh, I don’t know. I may have to go to jail again over Winn-Dixie and the South African things. If they insist on selling goods from South Africa, I may see the inside of some jail again.”

Revolutionaries for justice do not fade. They prepare for the next battle on behalf of God’s children.

Ralph David Abernathy, who has come many miles on dusty roads, is ready.