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CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy III, a former Georgia state senator whose famed father, the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy Sr., marched along side of the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr during the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s and led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after King was assassinated in 1968, has died.
The younger Abernathy passed away March 17 after a brave battle with colon cancer and two days shy of his 57th birthday.
The family said that funeral arrangements will be announced at a later date.
The Rev Al Sharpton released a statement saying Abernathy was a friend who carried on the legacy of the eider Abernathy, who died in 1990.
"He was my friend and brother, an activist in the truest sense of the word, and the bearer of the flame of his father" said Sharpton.
Abernathy spoke one-on-one in a interview with Cleveland Urban News.Com Editor-in-Chief Kathy Wray Coleman on Nov 4, 2012, just two days before the Nov 6, 2012 presidential election.
In Cleveland, Ohio in support of the reelection of President Barack Obama, he talked to Coleman, a 23-year local Black journalist and community activist, about voting, Civil Rights issues, and his father's relationship with Dr. King.
“My father and Uncle Martin [King] were like twins, they even dressed alike sometimes, and Uncle Martin died in his arms.” said Abernathy, an evangelist and motivational speaker who grew up in Montgomery, Alabama and served a decade in the Georgia State Legislature as an Atlanta senator. “We have got to vote in this election so that President Obama can continue to fight for the legacy of equal opportunity and Civil Rights that they left.”
"He will win," said Abernathy of Obama's reelection, a posture that came to fruition.
Obama, he said, is a part of systemic change in action and is a change agent for the betterment of Black people in particular and the American people in general.
“I think we’re much better off," said Abernathy of Obama, America's first Black president, as to the president's impact on Black America. “In as much as things seem to change, they still remain the same, and there is a transitional period of the Black community and a lack of true economic power."
And he took on the few Blacks that supported former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's unsuccessful bid in 2012 to unseat Obama as the Republican nominee.
“Some people have ‘Romnesia’ and have forgotten what we have fought for all these years.” said Abernathy.
Abernathy was among a host of famous Blacks that campaigned in Cleveland in 2012 and pushed a get out the vote message.
Ohio is a pivotal state for presidential elections.
That is evidenced in part by Cleveland, a largely Black major American city, hosting the 2016 Republican National Convention, a scenario that has brought on threats of riots against Republican front-runner Donald Trump, and a $50 million federal grant to the city, led by three-term Black Mayor Frank Jackson, for riot gear and other amenities.
While in Cleveland in 2012 Abernathy spoke at a rally at Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church on the city's east side, after appearing as a guest on ‘The Art McKoy University Show, which airs weekly from 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm on W.E.R.E. AM radio (Editor's note: Coleman arrangement the radio interview with McKoy, a community activist, after the one-on-one interview she did with Abernathy).
R&B singer, songwriter and soulful crooner John Legend, whom Coleman also interviewed one-on-one, was also amongBlack celebrities that toured Ohio during the 2012 election season, some of them, like Legend, of whom were commissioned by the Obama campaign. (Editor's note: The Obama campaign sat up the one-on-one interview between Coleman and Legend).
Other Blacks that campaigned in Cleveland in 2012 in support of Obama include Stevie Wonder, and Yolanda Adams, Congressional Black Caucus members, California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Obama for America Campaign Senior Adviser Broderick Johnson, Actress Vivica Fox, and Valerie Jarrett, one of three senior advisers to the president and the assistant to the president for public engagement and intergovernmental affairs.
Jailed at a protest in Montgomery at nine years old, Abernathy's was a fighter like his father. His older brother was named after his father too, but died three days after birth. The fourth of five children, including his deceased brother, the articulate Abernathy told Cleveland Urban News.Com that the reason he refers to King as 'Uncle Martin' is because the Abernathy and King families were just that close, and that his father and King were “Civil Rights twins."
He was also nine years old when King was assassinated in 1968 on a hotel balcony in Tennessee, and when his father later assumed the leadership role as head of of the SCLC.
He said that he often had trouble sleeping as a kid because his family's home in Montgomery had been bombed and he feared it would happen again.
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By Editor-in-Chief Kathy Wray Coleman, a-23-year journalist who trained at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio for 17 years, and who interviewed now President Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS
