ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 24, 1990                   TAG: 9004240331
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: ATLANTA                                LENGTH: Short

ABERNATHY IS BURIED AMID PRAISE

The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy was carried to his crypt Monday on a wave of praise, riding in a plain mule-drawn wooden wagon flanked by his sons and colleagues in the civil rights movement.

The procession followed a service at which civil rights leaders who criticized Abernathy for his controversial account of Martin Luther King Jr. got a public rebuke.

The famous and the humble piled shoulder-to-shoulder inside a southwest Atlanta church for the four-hour service for the man who was King's longtime chief lieutenant in the civil rights movement.

Afterward, two mules, pulling a green wooden wagon bearing Abernathy's casket, set out from West Hunter Street Baptist Church, where Abernathy was pastor, for Lincoln Cemetery.

King's body was carried to its resting place by a mule-drawn wagon in 1968 at the suggestion of Abernathy, who considered it symbolic of humility. Relatives said Abernathy wanted the same for himself.

Among those present were King's widow, Coretta Scott King, and three of her children; King's sister, Christine King Farris; Benjamin Hooks, head of the NAACP; U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.; Robert Kennedy Jr.; Archbishop Eugene Marino; and Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan.

Abernathy, who was King's closest friend and adviser, died April 17 of a heart attack induced by a blood clot. He was 64.

- Associated Press 


 by CNB