martin luther king Archives - Jerry Jazz Musician

Donzaleigh Abernathy, daughter of Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, discusses her life with her father, and on being a child of the civil rights movement

Ralph David Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr. were inseperable and together helped to establish what would become the modern American Civil Rights Movement. They preached, marched, and were frequently jailed together. Donzaleigh Abernathy, Ralph’s youngest daughter, has written Partners to History as a testament to the courage, strength, and endurance of these men who stirred a nation with their moral fortitude.

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February 19th, 2004

John D’Emilio, author of Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin is one of the important figures in the history of the American civil rights movement. Before Martin Luther King, before Malcolm X, Rustin was working to bring the cause to the forefront of America’s consciousness. A teacher to King, an international apostle of peace, and the organizer of the famous 1963 March on Washington, he brought Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence to America and helped launch the civil rights movement.

Nonetheless, Rustin has been largely erased by history, in part because he was an African American homosexual.

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December 6th, 2003

Douglas Brinkley, author of Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress in 1955 Alabama, had no idea she was changing history when, work-weary, she refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus. Now she is immortalized for the defiance that sent her to jail and triggered a bus boycott that catapulted Martin Luther King, Jr., into the national spotlight. Who was she, before and after her historic act?* Douglas Brinkley, a familiar and respected television commentator on a wide range of historical, documentary, and news programs

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February 18th, 2003

Pulitzer Prize winning author Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Movement

For Birmingham, Alabama native Diane McWhorter, growing up in the city Edward R. Murrow described as the “Johannesburg of America” was “pleasant, because we were the privileged people.” While privilege has its rewards, even as a young girl McWhorter sensed the segregated society that supported this privilege was anything but normal.

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July 29th, 2002