Daughter of Civil Rights Icon Offers Intimate View of Historic Time

Donzaleigh Abernathy, youngest daughter of Civil Rights Movement leader Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, was the keynote speaker Thursday at the ABA Judicial Division program, “Partners to History: A Personal Perspective on the Rule of Law During the Civil Rights Movement.”

Raised in the public eye of the Civil Rights Movement, Abernathy attended all the major marches and had a unique perspective from her family homes, which were gathering places for her father and his best friend, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as they began the movement that changed America.

In honor of these civil rights leaders’ friendship, Abernathy authored “Partners to History,” a pictorial history book that covers Reverend King’s career from the years prior to the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott to his death in April 1968 and her father’s leadership of the Poor Peoples Campaign to his own death in 1990.

“Partners in History” was nominated one of the “Best Books of 2004” for young adults by the American Library Association.

The program was part of the ABA Midyear Meeting in Los Angeles, Feb. 6 – 11.