Civil Rights Leader Ralph Abernathy Was A Member Of Kappa Alpha Psi

Did you know that civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.? Abernathy was initiated through the Beta Zeta chapter at Alabama State College, now Alabama State University, in 1948, the fraternity’s first chapter in Alabama and a cornerstone of Kappa Alpha Psi in the South.

Ralph David Abernathy Sr. was born on March 11, 1926, in Linden, Alabama, one of twelve children raised on his family’s farm. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, rising to platoon sergeant, before returning home to continue his education. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Alabama State College and a master’s degree in sociology from Atlanta University, and in 1948 he was ordained as a Baptist minister.

It was in Montgomery that Abernathy’s path crossed with a young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr., beginning one of the most consequential partnerships in American history. After Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955, the two men helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a 381-day protest that struck a decisive blow against segregation. In 1957, Abernathy and King co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization that would anchor much of the movement’s work for the next decade.

For more than a decade, Abernathy stood at King’s side through the campaigns that defined the civil rights era, and he was with him at the Lorraine Motel on the day King was assassinated in 1968. In the aftermath, Abernathy took up the mantle of leadership, becoming president of the SCLC and carrying forward the Poor People’s Campaign, King’s final crusade against poverty.

Abernathy led the SCLC into the 1970s and later told his story in the 1989 autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down. He died on April 17, 1990, in Atlanta at the age of 64. From a farm in Linden to the front lines of history, his life embodied Kappa Alpha Psi’s founding aim of achievement in every field of human endeavor.

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