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BUMP - Great story which ties some of our interests here on BP with the spirit of this national holiday...
Free Rivals - Atlanta prep star lives Civil Rights history
Free Rivals - Atlanta prep star lives Civil Rights history
Keith Niebuhr
Recruiting Analyst
Ralph David Abernathy IV, a star tailback at Atlanta (Ga.) Westminster who will sign a college letter of intent next month with Cincinnati, is an electric football player, his father proudly boasts.
"Once he gets the ball, you have no idea what might happen," Ralph David Abernathy III told Rivals.com. "He's very talented, very exciting. He's a game-changer."
That choice of words seems fitting, especially on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
After all, the player's grandfather, the late Ralph David Abernathy, was quite a game-changer himself as history books note. Not on the football field, mind you, but in something far more significant - the Civil Rights movement.
In fact, that's stating it mildly.
Abernathy was, as many recall, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s right-hand man. The men organized marches and sit-ins to protest racial discrimination in the 1950s and '60s. They faced threats together. And even shared jail cells.
When King was hit by an assassin's bullet early evening on April 4, 1968, on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., he was sharing room 306 with Abernathy. After medical personnel arrived on the scene, Abernathy rode in the back of the ambulance with King to a local hospital. Once there, he demanded entrance into the operating room.
"The doctors came over and said, 'There's nothing more we can do,' "Ralph David Abernathy III said, recalling the story told to him by his father. "My father went over and lied next to [King], and cradled him in his arms. He took his last breaths in my father's arms."
Abernathy died of a heart attack on April 17, 1990 at the age of 64. On that day, the White House issued a statement from then-President George H.W. Bush that read, ''Barbara and I join with all Americans to mourn the passing of the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a great leader in the struggle for civil rights for all Americans and a tireless campaigner for justice.''
Continued...
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ScriptOhio
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
A Brief Look at Recent History Through Pictures
Martin Luther King, Jr removes a burned cross from his yard in 1960. The boy is his son.
More pictures: http://www.mizozo.com/entertainment/06/2013/06/a-brief-look-at-recent-history-through-pictures.html
Martin Luther King, Jr removes a burned cross from his yard in 1960. The boy is his son.
More pictures: http://www.mizozo.com/entertainment/06/2013/06/a-brief-look-at-recent-history-through-pictures.html
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