Looking at society today you might notice any racism or discrimination, but there were people that had to fight for the rights of people today. One of those people was Ralph Abernathy. He was Martin Luther King Jr.’s right hand man and helped with many of the non-violent civil right acts. One of these acts was the Bus boycott. After Martin Luther King Jr. died Ralph took over the SCLC, which was one of the organizations MLK and Ralph started. He helped pave the way for a discrimination-free world.
Ralph Abernathy was born tenth out of twelfth in Linden, Alabama, and was originally named David but was later nicknamed ralph by his older sister. His family lived on a self-sufficient 500 acre farm. He went to Linden Academy and got a degree in
…show more content…
With the use of this advice he went on to fight discrimination.
One of the biggest examples of Ralph Abernathy fighting discrimination is his involvement in the Bus Boycott. When an African American women refused to give up her seat to a white passenger she was arrested and it sparked the beginning of the boycott. Edgar Nixon contacted Abernathy with the idea of the bus boycott and Abernathy brought the idea to King.
"Through hurried meetings in their churches ministers, along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), began a boycott of the city busses until all African Americans were assured better treatment."(Encyclopedia of World Biography 27).
Abernathy, King and a few other people created an organization named the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) because of the boycott. The MIA was a grassroots movement to help African Americans in the fight for civil rights. The organization had a major setback when King moved from Montgomery to Atlanta and later the group turned into the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The MIA however, was very helpful during the bus boycott. After 381 days, the boycott ended and they got what they wanted, desegregated