BY J’LYN FURBY
Reprint Article From The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Magazine / SPRING ISSUE / Vol. 48 / No. 2
Juanita
Abernathy (center), David Abernathy (second to her right), and John Lewis
(third to her right) march from Selma, Ala. to the state capitol in Montgomery
in 1965 with Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King.
Photo: City of
Atlanta.
Juanita Jones Abernathy, one of the pillars of the Civil
Rights Movement, has lived an extraordinary life of community servitude and
Civil Rights activism for a woman of her era. She was highly educated attending
the famous Selma University Boarding School in Selma Alabama and a graduate of
Tennessee State University. Her life and legacy as a Civil Rights Activist,
former First Lady of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Reverend
Ralph David Abernathy’s courageous wife is widely revered.
That’s why a recent Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit
Authority Board Retirement Ceremony was organized for Mrs. Abernathy by
self-proclaimed Republican “Statesman” Bruce LeVell. That dignified event is at
the center of this commemorative article because on that occasion Mrs.
Abernathy exuberantly expressed candid moments about her effervescent life as a
wife, mother, and pioneering female civil rights activist.
Republican statesman Bruce LeVell congratulates Juanita Abernathy on her stellar and courageous civil rights career.
“You know people
don’t vote now, I tell everybody,” laments Mrs. Abernathy. “We walked 50 miles
for the right to vote in loafers, not sneakers, with blisters on our feet from
Selma to Montgomery. I never miss an opportunity to vote no matter how small.
My husband and Martin had been to see the president; and had told him how
difficult it was for Blacks to vote in this county and especially in the
South.” That was after Jimmy Lee Jackson was killed in Marion Alabama.
“They had a literacy test that was to prohibit blacks from
voting,” continues Mrs. Abernathy during her retirement ceremony. “If you could
not fill out all that information. Then you could not qualify to register to
vote. My husband he was a KAPPA. He took his fraternity down to register to
vote. They had all this material to fill out. When they got to him. He [Rev.
Abernathy] wrote down the pledge of allegiance.”
The voter
registration worker told Dr. Abernathy “I knew you would do it right.” He got
to vote, and all his fraternity brothers were angry. “You got to vote, and we didn’t,”
they told him. He said, “I wrote down what I knew, and I knew she [voter
registration worker] didn’t know it. But it was just to keep us from voting.”
Mrs. Abernathy shared little known facts surrounding the
historic accomplishments of her husband and his freedom fighting brothers.
Together many leaders advanced the voting right issue all
the way to the White House. Mrs. Abernathy said how “President Johnson
federalized the state troopers and forced them to protect us. We did all of
that for the right to vote and we added no gerrymandering.”
Mrs. Abernathy’s historical contributions are also cemented
in history along “The U.S. Civil Rights Trail” locations and attractions that
document Abernathy’s and King’s story timeline state by state. Dr. Martin Luther King
and Reverend Ralph David Abernathy were each other’s right hand sharing in the
social struggles and triumphs of their time. The women who held these men down
have stories of their own.
Former Georgia State Representative Roberta Abdul-Salaam
is a self-proclaimed “Movement baby”, who much like Mrs. Abernathy does not
mince words. “I’ve known Mrs. Abernathy through ‘The Movement’, she says. “I
been working with SCLC since I was a 12 or 13 years-old. I went to my first
National SCLC Convention in 1972.”
Rep. Abdul-Salaam, spoke about Black women who have
always been the backbones of the community is different capacities. “Mrs.
Abernathy is such a strong pillar.
She exemplifies the kind of leadership that woman have made
a difference in the country for so long. I remember telling her a couple of
years ago; that we were going to do a celebration on Dec 1st in commemoration
of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. And she took me aside and took her time. She
[Mrs. Abernathy] told me well you know I am the only one of the originals left.
I kind of knew that. I was also fortunate to work with Mrs. Rosa Parks, Mrs. Coretta
King, and Mrs. Evelyn Lowery. I said what is it that made you women stand out
to these powerful men?”
The four female pillars of Civil Rights shared more than
the struggles of being progressive woman during that era. According to Rep.
Abdul-Salaam, “what I had noticed is that Dr. Young, Dr. Lowery, Dr. King and
Dr. Abernathy all choose their wives from that same community. That had to
speak for something.” All four women came from the same Union County community
in Alabama. “Mrs. Abernathy had leadership in her blood.
I heard Mrs. Abernathy say, that if you want to be a good
leader. Find good leadership and become a follower,” Abdul-Salaam recalls.”
Attorney Michael Tyler, a former MARTA Board president,
was the first to speak at the ceremony. “She knew and understand the imperative
of MARTA for those who truly needed it,” Tyler said. “Mrs. Abernathy was our
compass.”
Tyler, hailed Mrs. Abernathy for her incredible moral compass
and strengths: “You’ll see photos of Mrs. Abernathy when she was a younger
woman. Back then she was team with her legendary husband, one of the icons of
the 21st century, who she met back in high school.”
Mrs. Abernathy interrupted Tyler, “He [Rev. Abernathy]
use to brag and say the problem with you all is I raised my wife.”
Tyler, after yielding to Mrs. Abernathy, said, “It’s not a
mystery that Mrs. Abernathy was joined at the hip back in Selma back in the day
with her husband and stuck with him all the time. It was noteworthy to me, Mrs.
Abernathy, that back in 1955-56., when we had the Montgomery Bus Boycotts you
were there. When I think about your service to MARTA, to me it’s been an
extension of your service to ‘The Movement’. The movement after all started off
on a bus. It was all about equity in terms of opportunities for African
Americans.”
The Hip Hop Culture today would call her a “ride or die”
revolutionary activist. Mrs. Abernathy recalled that “Rosa Parks sat down on my
birthday in December 1955.”
She was the ultimate volunteer and spent a great deal of
time working with civic and religious organizations. Biblically speaking she
was Reverend Ralph David Abernathy’s helpmate. She gave Rev. Abernathy three
children, two girls Donzaleigh and Juandalynn and his son Ralph David Abernathy
III.
“We met when I was 16 years-old,” Mrs Abernathy revealed.
“He told people he raised me and he did.”
She wore many hats in addition to being a mother and
educator: Board of Directors and Secretary for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid
Transit Authority; Board of Trustees of the Morehouse School of Religion; Board
of Directors for the Ralph David Abernathy Towers and Foundations; Board of
Director and Treasurer of the Fulton County Development Authority; Board of
Director of the Atlanta-Fulton County League of Women Voters; and Citizen Panel
Review Board for the Development of Family and Children Services.
The right to vote was paid for with American blood and
lives of Black and White people. Mrs. Abernathy’s passionately voiced that;
“people were killed but we had blisters on our feet for the right to vote.
Because people died it’s a blood ballot.”
Protecting others was a standard operating procedure with
this noted civil rights heroine. Mrs. Abernathy identified as a Democrat but
nevertheless found a way to defend Black Republicans. According to Black Republican
businessman LeVell, she had a unique approach to how she influenced others. He
says that Mrs. Abernathy protected him—a self-described Frederick Douglass Republican—from
taunting and ridicule. In support of LeVell and other Black Republicans she
told others; “we need people on both sides of the aisles.” That is a strong
salient political statement from an iconic activist that resonates and remains
relevant today.
“I fondly remember Mrs. A.”, says LeVell. “She was nice
and fiery; when she put her hands on the desk and folded her arms and her eyes
got big everyone knew to watch out. I was her self-proclaimed protector. I
don’t know if she knew that; but everyone knew I wasn’t going to tolerate
anyone disrespecting her.
“It wasn’t right how she learned about her ‘retirement’ from
MARTA,” LeVell continues during an interview. “I had to do something. We had to
do something to honor Mrs. A. Right is Right. She was only 5’5 and mighty.”
Mrs. Abernathy was instrumental in the Montgomery Bus
Boycott and gaining Atlanta MARTA transportation for maids and home workers.
She literally walked and marched for
civil freedoms and access to transit systems for the working class. That was a
was key to Mrs. Abernathy’s civil rights activism that now “spans decade’s across
multiple cities and states—from Topeka, Kansas, to Memphis, Tennessee, from
Atlanta, Georgia, to Selma and Birmingham, Alabama and all the way to Washington,
D.C. charts the course of the Civil Rights Movement” as chronicled by U.S.
Civil Rights Trail.
Mrs. Abernathy maintained that “people really don’t know
that history. People think it just happened. It happened at the action of a lot
of people.”
Mrs. Abernathy was a woman with great fearlessness to
endure such a journey that included more than 100 locations across 15 states.
Political and Civil Rights Activists suggest that our society
could learn a thing or two from the former First Lady of the SCLC and the Black
Republican “We worked together for what is right” says LeVell.
“Civil Rights Veterans tell me that Mrs. Abernathy was
brazen and outspoken about issues and events her husband and MLK captained,”
says Maynard Eaton, SCLC’s National Communications Director. “She was not
passive participant in ‘The Movement’. She was not a background player. Mrs.
Abernathy was unafraid to unabashedly voice her strategic and savvy opinions,
I’ve learned,”
The Transportation Civil Rights issues that Mrs. Abernathy
fought for still fosters similar sentiments from transit users around the Southeast.
Mrs. Abernathy was also a successful entrepreneur who had several business endeavors
in Atlanta, Georgia. She held a high position with Mary Kay for over 20 years
and had to find her way to and from client homes. Just like today’s working
folk Mrs. Abernathy was no stranger to hard work and perseverance. Today’s
entrepreneurs, students, hourly workers and business professionals save time
and money by using the same public transportation systems across the country that
Mrs. Abernathy pushed for.
