Wright Thompson in Atlanta: An empty chair sits in a ranch-style home in a city long divided. It's a comfortable chair, positioned in front of a large high-def television, and it belongs to Juanita Abernathy, one of the last living heroes of the 1960s civil rights movement.
She'll be here in just a moment to talk about Michael Vick.
Until then, look at the family photographs in Abernathy's den. There's her husband, Ralph, with Martin in Selma. Uncle Martin, that's what her children call him. There's Rosa Parks. There's her husband with Lyndon Johnson as LBJ signs the Civil Rights Act. There's Juanita marching, holding signs, singing songs. Every step of the way, from Montgomery to Memphis, the Abernathys and the Kings walked hand in hand. And when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, it was Ralph who lovingly held his dying friend's head.
So every time Juanita Abernathy walks into a room — which she's doing right now, wearing a light purple jacket — she does so with credibility. Her opinions have weight behind them. She has been shot at with rubber bullets in Belfast, Northern Ireland, threatened by police in Jackson, Miss. With the other photos, she keeps a framed picture of her home that was bombed.
She sits down and tries to explain why so many black people in Atlanta see racism behind the treatment of Vick. It has very little to do with Vick and everything to do with antennae sensitive — maybe even understandably oversensitive — to injustice. It's based on years of bad experiences with the legal system and with federal agencies such as the FBI.
"They have created all sorts of lies and fabricated all sorts of imaginary stories on the leadership of the civil rights movement," she says. "And they even bugged my bedroom. In this house."
Leave a comment