Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 18, 1990 TAG: 9004180246
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
Abernathy had been undergoing treatment at Crawford Long Hospital here since March 23 for a low-sodium condition. Cardiologist Dr. Henry A. Liberman said that Abernathy, who had suffered a stroke in the past, went into cardiac arrest while undergoing a lung scan. He died shortly after noon.
Abernathy had been pastor of the West Hunter Street Baptist Church for the last 28 years and was president emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
During his long, close relationship with King, Abernathy became known as his alter ego. The two were called "the Movement's Twins." Through the tumultuous civil rights era, during which Abernathy's home and church both were bombed, the two marched together, ate together, organized together and went to jail together. But last year, Abernathy's autobiography, "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down," created a furor among civil rights activists because of its detailing of King's extramarital affairs.
Abernathy and King, who was murdered in Memphis in 1968, founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Before that, Abernathy helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott, which catalyzed the non-violent civil rights movement.
`Georgia state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, a friend and political ally, said "He never received the credit, the appreciation that he deserved."
Abernathy expressed similar feelings during an interview last October. "I have been left out for a long time," he said in his deep, slow drawl. "In so many instances there has been an attempt to rewrite history. And many times on photographs, Martin and I were marching together, hand in hand, they cropped the photographs and left me out."
By 1980, when he declared his support for Ronald Reagan for president, he was out of the civil rights mainstream. Abernathy supported Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. But the autobiography solidified the break with past associates.
Some civil rights leaders signed a statement suggesting that Abernathy's strokes had affected his mind. Abernathy apparently died without making peace with his former friends.
Tuesday, however, many of Abernathy's allies-turned-critics paid respect to his memory.
Benjamin L. Hooks, executive director of the NAACP, said he knew "first-hand of the sacrifices [Abernathy] made for the civil rights movement, and that should never be forgotten." Hooks said he was "saddened by his passing and will always value the many contributions he made to the cause of equality and justice."
Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., praised Abernathy as "a fellow Alabamian who showed tremendous courage in standing up to the brutal system of segregation and racial degradation that had existed in the South. He was a fighter."
King's son, Martin Luther King III, a Fulton County, Ga., commissioner, called Abernathy's death "certainly a very tragic loss to our nation."
by CNB