"To help fight school desegregation, Abernathy enrolled her children in independent white schools. Their friendship and activism helped reshape America’s cultural and political landscape. Left to right: An unidentified man, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, Coretta Scott King, Juanita Abernathy, and unidentified residents of the Vine City neighborhood who were protesting their living conditions, ca. Messages poured in Thursday night as many remembered the civil rights leader. 1966. Juanita Abernathy was one of the last remaining civil rights leaders who were there at the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement. That evening King listened as they discussed the crisis of the Negro in Montgomery. but one by one they're all passing away gone to their heavenly place.
She was the young wife of Rev. She helped rally the black community in Montgomery, Alabama as her husband Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., helped to start the civil rights movement. As a foot soldier in the Civil Rights Movement, Juanita Abernathy participated in all of the pivotal protests of the era. The two married in 1952 after she earned a bachelor's degree in Business Education from Tennessee State University and became a high school teacher. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds.Abernathy died Thursday surrounded by family at a hospital in Atlanta, family spokesman James Peterson said. Rep. John Lewis released the following statement:Juanita Abernathy, civil rights icon, has died at age 89 Theresa Seiger, Cox Media Group National Content Desk Crystal Bonvillian, Cox Media Group National Content Desk Theresa Seiger, Cox Media Group National Content Desk As a foot soldier in the Civil Rights Movement, Juanita Abernathy participated in all of the pivotal protests of the era. Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson and others point in the direction of gunshots that killed Martin Luther King Jr.Abernathy's work in the civil rights movement was not without risks. Martin Luther King Jr., helped to start the civil rights movement. In 1966, Abernathy and her husband, along with Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta, resided in a Chicago slum to protest housing conditions for African Americans in what was then the most racially segregated large city in America. In a statement, her family described her as the "last remaining person who was actively involved from day one of the Montgomery bus boycott and the civil rights movement. Her family became friends with King and his wife, Coretta Scott, and the men shared jail cells in their many arrests during the movement. View Juanita Abernathy, the widow of the Rev. In "Despite continued daily death threats against her family, she attended major mass meetings, taught voter education classes, hosted and housed Freedom Riders, and marched on Washington in 1963," her family said in a statement. In January 1957 while her husband and King traveled to Atlanta to establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Juanita Abernathy and her infant daughter miraculously survived the bombing of their home by white supremacists. Juanita Abernathy. Abernathy continued her activism when she and her family moved to Atlanta in 1961. The couple got to know another young preacher and his wife, Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. Ms. Abernathy, he said, “was no exception and was often a shining example.” Juanita Odessa Jones was born on Dec. 1, 1931, in Uniontown, Ala., … Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a co-founder of the civil rights movement.