And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: An Autobiography

Overview

The Rev. Dr. Ralph David Abernathy (1926-1990) was Joshua to Martin Luther King's Moses-his closest friend, at his side during all the battles, and eventually his successor.

In 1956, when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, Abernathy enlisted King to join the protest. Together, they led the landmark bus boycott for 381 days. During this opening campaign of the modern civil rights struggle, Abernathy's house was bombed, his church dynamited.

Abernathy and King helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which grew out of the boycott. The nonviolent protests and marches took them all over the South-Selma, Albany, Birmingham-and to Washington and Chicago as well. Together, they were jailed more than forty times.

In 1968, King was assassinated; he died in Abernathy's arms. Abernathy took up the reins of the nonviolent movement during the immensely tense period that followed.

In this book, originally published in 1989, Abernathy not only tells his story, but expounds on the leaders he knew intimately: King, of course, but also Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, and Lyndon Johnson, among others. He reveals the planning that went into the major protest and the negotiations that brought them to a close. And he celebrates the victories that integrated communities, gave economic and political power to the disenfranchised, and brought hope to people who had not dreamed of it.

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