Summary: He was a prominent leader in the American Civil Rights Movement, a Baptist minister, and a close friend and associate of Martin Luther King, Jr. Following King's assassination in 1968, he took up the leadership position of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Poor People's Campaign and led the March on Washington, D.C. that had been planned for May 1968. At the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, he served as pastor of the largest black church in Montgomery, AL, and led the way in distributing flyers asking blacks to boycott Montgomery buses. For 13 years, from 1955 to 1968, he walked with King on his journey to tear down the walls of segregation and discrimination in the South. He endured bombings, beatings, jail time, confiscation of his family inheritance, and continual threats to march through the streets of the South proclaiming, “Let my people go.” He was with King on the night of his assassination and cradled him in his arms, as King took his last breath. After King's death, he continued the civil rights work that had been started. During his lifetime, he was honored with more than 300 awards and citations, including five Honorary Doctorate Degrees. He died in 1990. <br><br> When asked by a college student how he came to know Jesus Christ as his Saviour, he said, "When I was a young boy I went to the altar one Sunday morning in my father’s Baptist church and there I met Jesus Christ. And I’ve never been the same." He said on another occasion, "Christians should be ready for a change because Jesus was the greatest changer in history." His name is Ralph David Abernathy, Sr.
