We honor Black History Month by presenting Pacifica’s Archives program, From the Vault. From the Vault presents one of the key architects of the African American Civil Rights Movement, The Reverend Ralpg Abernathy. Born in 1926, Abernathy was raised in Alabama and by 1952 was minister for the largest African American congregation in Montgomery.
When seamstress Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger, Abernathy and fellow Montgomery minister Martin Luther King, Jr. joined forces and together organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
In 1957, He co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was to become one of the most prominent organizations in the fight for desegregation. Abernathy died in 1990.
Today, we feature the sermon that Abernathy delivered to the SCLC on October 18, 1960, and broadcast only on Pacifica Radio – truly a media outlet at the fore front of social justice reporting.