ANSBACH, Germany (Jan. 20, 2015) -- "Faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase." -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
One such first step began over a weekend in December, in 1955, Montgomery, Alabama, a group of Soldiers, Family members, and other garrison community members learned before the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.
U.S. Army Garrison Ansbach hosted a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observance Thursday at the Von Steuben Community Center at Bismarck Kaserne.
The event -- sponsored by the garrison, 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, and the Illesheim Spouses and Civilians Club -- included guest speaker Juandalynn R. Abernathy, an opera singer and daughter of American civil rights leader Ralph David Abernathy.
"King encouraged all people to apply the principles of nonviolence to make this country a better place to live, popularizing the notion of the beloved community," said Mitchell Jones, USAG Ansbach deputy garrison commander. "In Dr. King's beloved community, people and communities would be united by the shared prosperity and peaceful conflict resolution."
Ralph Abernathy was one of the primary leaders of the civil rights movement in the U.S. He succeeded Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after King's assassination in the spring of 1968. Juandalynn Abernathy, the oldest child of Ralph and Juanita Abernathy, witnessed the burgeoning of the American Civil Rights Movement as a child.
"My father and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. -- I called him Uncle Martin -- were best friends and working partners in the civil rights movement from the beginning, 1955," said Abernathy to the audience.
She recounted how her family and the King family lived in Montgomery, Alabama, when authorities arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to sit in the back of the bus. Ralph Abernathy was an officer of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the chapter's president, Edgar Nixon, who was then unable to immediately be in town, called Abernathy to help organize a response. Nixon placed the call on a Friday for the boycott to start Monday.
"He asked my father to call the new pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, which was Uncle Martin," said Abernathy, "and have him help my father with the responsibility of getting the word out of the proposed bus boycott in a short notice."
"The black community of Montgomery was a very close-knit and organized community, I was told," continued Abernathy. "For 381 days, not one black citizen rode the bus system in Montgomery. Good old fashioned cooperation and unity, fortified by racism and hatred with a drop or two of faith, proved to be stronger than any opposition. The bus company filed bankruptcy, the seating policy changed, and the modern civil rights movement as we know it today began."
Since the boycott, the two families had been close.
"From the beginning through the end, we were together as families -- the Kings and the Abernathys," said Abernathy. "We took vacations together, we shared hotel rooms together. We were always together. On Tuesday there was a tradition of swimming at the YMCA. We went to the world's fair. We did everything together."
Abernathy described the civil rights movement her and the King's family led as perilous, mentioning "all of the very dangerous and often life-threatening hills and mountains that my parents had to climb." When her father and King were in Atlanta forming the Southern Christian Leadership Conference shortly after the success of the bus boycott, her house and family's church -- and other churches in Montgomery -- were bombed. Abernathy attributed her and her mother's survival to divine will.
"I think it's a miracle -- I know it's a miracle," she said. "I know after three attempts that I'm supposed to be here, and I'm supposed to do what I'm supposed to do. Otherwise I would have left here a long time ago."
The relation between Ralph David Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr. continued until the day King was shot, April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.
"Daddy was on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel when Uncle Martin was shot, and he would not leave Uncle Martin's body at the hospital," said Abernathy. "They sanitized him, and he put on scrubs, and he witnessed the surgery that tried to save Uncle Martin's life. When Martin died in my father's arms in the hospital, my father signed the death warrant. And my father continued the leadership of the civil rights movement after the assassination to try to finish the work they had started over a weekend in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955."
Juandalynn Abernathy's career as a singer was a trajectory she was on her entire life.
"My whole life I sung," said Abernathy, who recounted to the audience her childhood.
Mahalia Jackson, the gospel singer, and Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King Jr., encouraged Abernathy to pursue a career in singing. Even before Abernathy moved from Montgomery when she was five years old, Jackson would request her to sing.
"Mahalia Jackson was in and out of the house, and she used to say, 'Oh, sing for me, sweetheart,'" said Abernathy. "And I'd tell her I had three voices. I didn't know at that time that those were the ranges. She would always say back then that I was going to be a classical singer. Not a gospel singer -- classical."
Her path to her career was fraught with difficulties. She experienced backlash in elementary school when the school systems integrated.
"We had to integrate our elementary school, which was a very difficult time," said Abernathy. "White people didn't like that we were in the school with them. They didn't like it. And we were spat on, and we were called all kinds of names."
She endured, however, and went to a performing arts high school. After high school she earned a scholarship to Oberlin College in Ohio, and she earned her master's degree at Boston Conservatory of Music. Her career brought her to study German at the Goethe-Institut (Goethe Institute) in Munich. She continued her studies and career as an opera singer in Europe, including studying at the Universita di Perugia in Italy. Her career has had her tour Europe, Asia and the U.S.
"Having traveled the world and living outside of America for so long, I have a different perspective than the average black American citizen," said Abernathy.
To the audience, she paraphrased writer George Santayana: "'He who does not know his history is doomed to repeat it.'"
"As black people and as people, we have to come together and do a better job of teaching the history and leading the anti-racism fight," said Abernathy. "We have to take a page from the Jewish community when they say 'Never again.' We have to know our history so that we do not repeat it. Never again. The first record of slaves in the Americas is recorded in 1690, and in each decade since, African Americans have left their mark. History did not begin nor end with Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph David Abernathy. They are part of a continuum.
"We must believe that each of us can have a part in making history, in making new history," continued Abernathy. "African Americans have left our mark on history, and it is our duty to learn it and not only share it with the next generation but to the world. It's not just our history, it's American history, and the truth must be told."
She also embraced the role of the American South in American and world history.
"The South saved America," said Abernathy. "And ultimately racial progress in America would change the world. The battlegrounds for the civil rights movement were in the South. Alabama and Mississippi shed a lot of blood and ultimately changed the laws in America. That made it a better nation. As America changed, the world changed."
After she concluded the speaking portion of the event, Abernathy took questions from the audience, during which she clarified her father's relation to King. King, in his final speech, referred to Abernathy as "the best friend I have in the world."
"They could not do without each other," said Juandalynn Abernathy.
On request, she sang the American spiritual "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" by Wallace Willis.
"I would never guess in a lifetime that I would meet someone of your history and your background and to be in the same room as someone who was personally touched by your father and Dr. King," said Jones following the event. "It's amazing. So on behalf of everyone here today, I want to say thank you."
After a cake-cutting, Abernathy stayed to talk to the event attendees.
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To learn more about Martin Luther King Jr. or Martin Luther King Jr. Day, select "Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2015" in the "Related Links" section. To learn more about Equal Opportunity at USAG Ansbach, select "USAG Ansbach Equal Opportunity Advisers" in the "Related Links" section. Juandalynn Abernathy also visited Hohenfels Middle/High School recently. To find out more on that visit, select "Abernathy speaks at MLK Observance" in the "Related Links" section.
Related Links:
USAG Ansbach official blog site
USAG Ansbach official home page
USAG Ansbach Equal Opportunity Advisers
2015 Martin Luther King Jr. Day Tri-Signed Letter
Abernathy speaks at MLK Observance
USAG Ansbach official Flickr page
Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2015
USAG Ansbach official Twitter feed
USAG Ansbach official Facebook page
USAG Ansbach 2015 Martin Luther King Jr. Day event Flickr photo album
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