In the late seventies, my first organizing work (along with Ralph Abernathy III who was a freshman at Benedict College and his classmate (my brother) Darryl Gregory Gray) was with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference when Ralph Abernathy was the head. We marched from Chester to Columbia with church rallies along the way, over the death of a black man, Mickey McClendon, murdered for dating a white woman. McClendon, from Chester, South Carolina, was shot, tied behind a pick-up truck, set on fire and dragged down a road, much the way James Byrd Jr. was killed in Jasper, Texas, in 1998. Controversial organizer Golden Franks was Abernathys man on the ground. My most memorable image of that time, well the evening rally in an old white wood church stands out, but the most personal is perhaps Rev. Abernathy taking all us young organizers to dinner at the local McDonalds.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 16:10:05 +0000