Her mother mrs. Abernathy pregnant with her second daughter survived the bombing of their home in montgomery in 1957. Along with tuskegee attorney fred gray, she is the last remaining leader from the montgomery busboy cot. On several occasions i have been privileged to listen to mrs. Abernathy, recall her experiences in the civil rights struggle. We are in for a treat. Our program is simple. First, we will hear introductory comments by a scholar. Mrs. Abernathy will offer remembrance s about the movement. Finally well open the floor to questions so we can have an engaging conversation with mrs. Abernathy. Let me identify miss brenda ten dal of university of North Carolina charlotte who will introduce mrs. Abernathy. Native of charlotte earning her bachelor there and working on docket hit at Emory University on dissertation that explores lives of widows. Please join me in welcoming mrs. Tindle. [ applause ] [ applause ] greetings. It is indeed a privilege to provide opening remarks for this special session entitled remembering the career in civil rights dialogue with mrs. Mrs. Juanita jones abernathy. Id like to thank gregory nixon, john ensclo and harris for inviting know take part in this ram. Finally id like to thank mrs. Abernathy for sharing time wisdom and unique perspective on the Civil Rights Movement. As you can see, hers is a life well lived and well preserve issed even as she has endured and witnessed our nations darkest hours. Needless to say we are excited to hear from her today. The Civil Rights Movement as Diane Mcwhorter once wrote is endless areally prison mattic struggle at the score of our natural a dentdty. Indeed its a movement thats been written for multiple perspectives documented in countless manuscripts, biographies, auto biographies, docket riment ris and films and elongated in our scholarly quest to find historic borders. It is like all things subject to atrophy of memory in light of historic anniversaries. This year alone we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Civil Rights Act 1964 freedom summer. We remember the lives of james e. Cheney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Swarner who lost their lives fighting in the trenches for freedom. However, if we wish to continue deepening our understanding of this prison mattic struggle, it will not solely be found by studying the iconic men or block buster events that have are come to dominate the movements master narrative. Rest assured that story is important and has found a permanent home in the American Social zpf political reform. For me, the story of the Civil Rights Movement became more intimate, more tangible even, when i watched the eyes on the prize docketmentumentary as a High School Student and heard mrs. Abernathy utter these words, we were the movement. She was in part referring to the significant role everyday black women played in the struggle for freedom. She was alluding to the unique contribution she made to the wife of Ralph David Abernathy and most importantly an activist in her own right. There is a rather naive tendency to view the wives of prominent civil rights leaders as satellites of the struggle politicized upon marrying their husbands as women standing behind their men rather than beside them. To the contrary women like mrs. Abernathy, king, young and so many other wives were partners in the movements for civil rights. In their predate and transcend the lives they shared with their husbands. In the case of mrs. Abernathy the germ of her activism is firmly routed in union town alabama. In his auto biography the walls came tumbleing down. Dr. Abernathy writes, from talking to her parents i learned she had always been strong willed and independent. As a young girl she had not submitted to other indignities other blacks were willing to bear. As a teenager, she had come to town to buy the weeks groerk ris at white owned super market. As her items were rung up she watched a boy carry her items out to the car. She refused to pay it. The cashier looked at her for a second and shook his head. What are you it watching for he asked. Im waiting for the boy to carry out my groceries, she replied. The cashier looked puzzled but then his mouth fell wide open. He said we do that for white customers only. You charged me the same amount, she said. Then i should get the same service. She dug in her heels. The cashier stood for a moment uncertain of what to do. The line was getting longer. Still the cashier wouldnt instruct the boy to carry her groceries. Well . She said finally. If the boy cant take my groceries to the car, i guess hell have to put them back on the shelves. Then she walked out of the store. Dispatches such as these reveal the stages of mrs. Abernathy es po lit sizization that evolved in the 1950s and 1960s marking water shed with americas brand of democracy. With her husband, she stood on the front b lines of the movements iconic overwhich you ares including the montgomery busboy cot major campaigns in albany birmingham selma, chicago. The Poor Peoples Campaign and the charleston strike of 1968. She like dr. Abernathy marched in her sunday best. She too was jailed. Still, there were times she weathered the storm without her husband. In this regard, no one noou the casual violence and pedestrian hate like the wives of the struggle. They courted widow hood atz the spector of death and their husbands mar did dem defined their lives. When their husbands were away their home phones rang endlessly. They were often on the end of empty and real threats of violence and harm. In 1957 for instance, while mrs. Abarea that think was pregnant with her daughter and home alone with her eldest daughter wandaline, then a baby their house and abernathys church, First Baptist church in montgomery were fire bonled. Though she and her children emerged unscathed, such an act was i have dangers of Civil Rights Activism. Beyond the ways in which she interfaced with the civil and human rights mrs. Abernathy served as first lady in the churches, dr. Abernathy pastored and con if i distant of her husband for the civil rights Conference Following the death in 1968. She witnessed trials and tribulations that came with public life. She and dr. Abernathy renegotiated their political ambitions in the post civil rights years. In truth no one can tell this story with level of integrity and eyewitness intimacy better than mrs. Abernathy herself. With that said, ill hand the podium over to the lady of the hour, mrs. Juanita jones abernathy. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you. Oh what a beautiful introduction. Thank you. And thank you dr. Eskew for envisions this opportunity for me and seeing it through. Last night i arrived from a ten hour flight from germany and got in the bed about 11 00 and a rose this morning. I could not miss this opportunity. Its so important to speak with you historians for you write the words that many of our young people and teach the words that many of our young people will only learn from you. I pray that you will be unrelenting in your teaching the truth regardless to how you feel about it. My husband used to say as i would say to him, ralph, the media said this and the media said that. Thats not true. I said you did this and you did that. They dont even call your name. His reply would always be juanita, dont worry about my legacy. Real historians will dig up the truth. My response always would be to him, dig it up from who . We will all be gone by then. So who will tell the truth . Im asking you to be that vehicle to write our history and to tell it like it was and like it is. I truly feel you have a moral obligation to tell the truth. If you dont who . And if not now, when . Will it be told . Dr. Eskew it has been wonderful having the privilege of meeting you and i guess on an annual basis several years now. He has heard my story. You dont know though as historians about the women of the movement. I am truly amazed at how people have rewritten our history and put people in place in key roles who were not even involved. I have begun to say my god the longer some people live the bigger the stories become. Therefore, i admonish you to do research and find the facts because today they are written by the news media and articles and magazines by people who during the Civil Rights Movement many of whom were not even privileged to write for the new york times. Time magazine and u. S. News and world report. They were not able privileged at that time to write. They are now writing our history. Its very very, very very unfortunate. I started off as miss tindel said im an old schoolteacher. You get accustomed to learning names. That you people she did some research. People dont. They dont look for anything and they go into the classroom and im not criticizing you teachers and tell these stories as though they are facts. Ive heard over and over and over again that malcom x and Martin Luther king were friends. Not so. They only met once. That was in washington d. C. Only met once. Its e now to put some people with some people, so they do that because its good publicity. They only met once. And you will see the picture of malcom and ralph martin and malcom shaking hands. Between them you see the tie of a man. They reached over my husband who was present at that initial and only meeting. They reached across him and shook hands. The wives were not friends. In fact to tell the truth, hah malcom x was not even a supporter of what we were doing. We were non violent, and we were moving too slow. Many of us were called uncle toms and being ultraconservative because of the positions we took. So now everybody was with us who was black. Thats not true. Every leader of an organization who was black was not with us. Its time for us to get it right. Im not as young as i used to be. Thank god i have good health. Hes been good to me. I have no Health Problems except arthritis ive had since i was 17 in college. I dont have any high Blood Pressure. I dont have any Heart Disease im aware of. And i dont have diabetes. I dont take one medication. My god has been good to me. My mother had 93 past who had no high Blood Pressure and no Heart Disease. Her body just shut down one day, and she went on in. So i attribute that to i i tell everybody must have been my indian genes cause my grandmother, grandfather was full blooded cherokee. My grandmother on my mothers side was half cherokee. So maybe, i dont know, maybe thats whats keeping me. I dont know, but i am thankful to god that i have my mental faculties, i can remember and my children dont like for me to remember as much as i do because its convenient sometimes when they can run things past you because you do not remember. I want to Say Something to you about the women of the Civil Rights Movement. You hear about men did this and men did that and men did the other. They did, but let me tell you something. Women have always be been the backbone of men. Whether you give us credit for it or not. Real men know that without their wives, god only knows what would happen to them sometimes. Women take care of the children they do the teaching and the training, and give the examples of finer woman hood to our girls. We look to the fathers to give their sons examples of finer man hood. Women have always been brave. Weve always been intuitive. You know, we are kind of half way psychic. You know, sometimes you tell your husband well honey i wouldnt do so and so if i were you because it just may not happen the way you think it will. And i think maybe you need to think about that a little more. Mr. Or mrs. So and so who works in that business is not as loyal as you think she is or he is. We are kind of intuitive. Men dont always like to hear that, but the older they get, you know, the more they kind of give us a little more credit when they cant avoid it. Im not downing men. Im just telling you like it is. Men are courageous but theres an old, old saying behind every great man theres a woman. I ilike to say beside him because we dont walk behind, we walk beside our men. My husband used to say as pastor of the church, when the women leave im going too. The backbone of the church and you know its the truth, are the women. If you want a job done and done well, give it to the women and they will see it through. The men in the movement ran the movement. Before their was a movement there were two women joeanne robinson and burke. You hear little about them. Those two women were working with the montgomery busboy cot, bus system, to get them to give an us an assigned seating arrangement to the blacks. Joe an robinson and mary burke were with the council long before we had Martin Luther king. You hear now that Martin Luther king started it. Thats not true. E. D. Nixon was president of the naacp and rosa parks was the secretary. My husband was chairman of the membership drive. Had when we married he was teaching at Alabama State with joe an robinson and mary burke. He had to quit to give his full time to the church, First Baptist church, where he was when i married him. The church he was pastoring when martin came to pastor dexter avenue Baptist Church. You dont hear very much about vernon johns. You need to look him up. A genius of a man, a very courageous man. Well educated and was not afraid of anybody or anything. Was martins predecessor at dexter avenue Baptist Church. You dont read very much about vernon johns because he wasnt concerned about whether he had on a certain suit or even if the suit was really that clean. His shirt collar could have been broken down. Didnt really matter. An intellect churl but he and his first wife raised three phi bet at that kappa children. We dont give him credit. Had there not been vernon johns in montgomery who laid the foundation and did his one man protest constantly in montgomery there never would have been a rosa parks. Before rosa, there was Claudette Colvin who had been arrested and mary louise smith. They were teenagers and could not gel the community. Rosas being the secretary of the naacp, when she sat down, e. D. Nixon said now its time for us to do something. Now you read in some of these books again i tell you how people are writing our history somebody even said that rosa was chosen and had been counselled what to do. Thats why she sat down. Biggest lie that could be told. Mary burke and Joann Robinson had gotten from the bus company a seating arrangement. Rosa was the first two seats the long seat across the back, and the first two rows from the back forward. Rosa was seated in one of those seats when the bus driver asked her to get up and give her seat to a white man. She refused because she was seated where the bus company had said blacks were legally supposed to sit. So when you read that rosa was chosen to sit there to get a case, thats not true. I was in montgomery. I answered the phone when e. D. Nixon called and said ralph, weve got to do something. Rosa has been arrested. Because my husband was a leader in montgomery as a student head of the student body at Alabama State and an activist in the community as a pastor. Pastoring the oldest black Baptist Church there dexter avenue Baptist Church which grew out of First Baptist. So im saying this so that you can tell it like it should be. I had a history teacher to ask me once, mrs. Abernathy, how did it feel for your church First Baptist, to be invited to dexter . I said excuse me. How did it feel for your church i read that your church was invited to dexter. I said yes. How did that make you feel . I said so i dont understand. First baptist is the oldest church. National Baptist Convention usa incorporated was organized. Alabama State College organized in First Baptist. What do you mean . She said your church was invited to dexter. I said dexter was a Sister Church that came out of First Baptist. We are not a less than church. She said oh, i didnt understand hah that. So thats what happens when people write stories rather than facts. My position ever since has been to tell the truth, to give credit where credit is due. Claudette colvin sat down and was arrested and Mary Lee Smith did too. Rosa parks was number three. Because she was secretary for the naacp, mrs. Nixon, as a president , decided we were going to work. He said okay, we are going to stay off the buses one day. That was monday. To demonstrate that we didnt like what had happened. That rosa was arrested. After the buses ran empty on monday, they decided to do it on tuesday. And on thursday they organized and decided to get a president. Martin luther king was chosen the president. The boycott was a 100 success before we had a leader. It was the fact that the community were completely irritated by the abuse of the mean bus drivers in montgomery. That sparked what i call automatic combustion. The people were tired. I am so thankful that i am still here and can say some things. I hope you understand i dont need anything from it. I just know that the truth has to be told for oncoming generations because if you dont tell it who will . I look at reporters today. Nobody does research. They just write a story. If people take the stories that they pick up from the media as being facts and write the books then the truth will never get out because nobody does research. The reporters really are supposed to. Thats a part of t