Abernathy Steps Down

Shortly before his assassination in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. told his constant alter ego and right-hand man, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, "Ralph, whatever happens, keep the team together." Last week, his shoulders sagging and his voice an emotion-charged bass, Abernathy stood before King's tomb on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta and spoke to his fallen mentor: "I did what you asked. I tried to keep the team together. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for resigning this day. I'll see you in the morning."

After five frustrating years of trying to sustain an activist organization with a rambling, country-preacher leadership style, Abernathy had resigned as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His reason: lack of financial support.

In its heyday, King's S.C.L.C. could raise as much as $2,000,000 for one year's operating expenses, primarily by skillful use of one of the country's best mailing lists (208,000 names) aimed at white liberals in the North. But public interest in civil rights waned, and this year, after radical staff cuts and a sharp paring of field projects, S.C.L.C. was trying to operate on a budget of $500,000. Last week Abernathy announced that the organization was $50,000 in debt. He blamed the deficit largely on indifferent middle-class blacks who "feel that they have 'arrived' simply because they now occupy high positions, but will not support S.C.L.C. financially." He added: "It is hard to ask for money from white people because you can't beg a man and fight him at the same time."

Abernathy also disclosed a rift between King's widow and the organization he left behind. Coretta Scott King has devoted most of her considerable drawing power as a fund raiser to gathering donations for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change, a research library and memorial to her slain husband. A modern four-block complex to be built only two blocks from the dilapidated S.C.L.C. headquarters on Auburn Avenue, the center is expected to cost over $6,000,000. Abernathy said Mrs. King had been unwilling to share funds with his strapped civil rights organization. King's onetime firebrand protege, Hosea Williams, criticized her for not sharing $67,000 raised earlier this year at an Atlanta benefit concert featuring Flip Wilson and Jose Feliciano and recorded by RCA Records, with a $50,000 advance to the King Center.

At next month's national convention, S.C.L.C. must name Abernathy's successor, and already a logical choice looms: Coretta Scott King.

The population of Atlanta is only 52% black, but 80% of its schoolchildren are black. To stem the continuing white flight to suburban schools (4,686 white elementary students left the system over the past year), the local N.A.A.C.P. chapter struck a compromise in a 15-year-old desegregation suit against the Atlanta school board that leaves over half of the city's schools virtually all-black and could become a model for other cities seeking to skirt extensive busing of schoolchildren. In return, the school board guaranteed the hiring of Atlanta's first black superintendent and other high-level black administrators. Outraged by the tradeoff, which he sees as a dangerous precedent, N.A.A.C.P. Executive Director Roy Wilkins last week gave the Atlanta chapter 30 days to reverse its position or face revocation of its charter.

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