“After Sunday service, we would meet,” Abernathy said about the Abernathy and King families. “We would go to their church or they would come to our church and then we would go to dinner. But on that particular Sunday, Aunt Coretta was in the hospital, so we all converged on this hospital in Atlanta. And Uncle Martin had this tiny weeny little cassette player. We’re all in the hospital room. It was the Abernathy family, the King family, Granddaddy and Big Momma. And Uncle Martin had this little tape recorder. He talked and we listened.”

What was said by King — and recorded on that tape recorder — was the beginning of one of King’s most memorable speeches.

“These are the words that he said,” Abernathy said. “‘If any of you are around when I meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get someone to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then, I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Prize. That’s not important. Tell them not to mention that I have 400 hundred other awards. That’s not important.’ He said, ‘I want someone to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to serve others. I would like for someone to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to be able to say that day that I tried to be right on the war. I want you to be able to say that day that I tried to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day that I tried to devote my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say that day that I did try in my life to see to those who were in prison. I want you to try to make it clear that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, I want you to say that I was a drum major for justice, say that I was a drum major for peace, that I was a drum major for righteousness.’”

While now these words are memorable, back then, in that hospital room, they caused a ruckus.

“Father said, ‘I don’t want to hear that,” Abernathy recalled. “’You’re preaching your own funeral. That’s not okay.’ So my father started to raise this ruckus. As we were leaving the room, but just before I left the room, Aunt Coretta said to Uncle Martin, ‘Martin, when I get out of here, why don’t we go away? Why don’t we go away somewhere, just the two of us?’ And Uncle Martin said, ‘You know, that’s a good idea. Let’s go to Ralph’s house.’ As small as I was, I was thinking, ‘Are you kidding me?’ And so they came to our house. That was my job to get out the silverware. That was the Uncle Martin that I knew. Thank God he came to our house because it would only be weeks later before the news came.”

King has almost been fictionalized over the years, made into this abstract figure standing for love and justice. But King was a human being just like the rest of us and Abernathy let the audience experience the personal side of King.

“I’m going to tell you about my Uncle Martin,” Abernathy said. “I loved him with all my heart and soul. If you look at his fingernails, you can see how short they are. He used to bite his fingernails. Because he bit his fingernails, I bit my fingernails too. He would get very, very nervous because he was gentle. He was shy. It’s hard to believe that someone that profound would have this shyness about him. But he did. And then, the other thing for me was he was incredibly funny. He had this tremendous sense of humor and this gift of mimicry. A lot of people don’t have it. Eddie Murphy has it. Uncle Martin was like that. He could characterize. He would do everything and that’s why I loved so much about him.”

While Abernathy was a witness to many of the civil rights milestones, it also came at a price, for her childhood was not the usual childhood that many of us experience.

“When I was a little girl, I used to think of my dad that he loved Uncle Martin more than he loved me because I never had time with my dad without Uncle Martin,” Abernathy said. “And Uncle Martin’s family barely had time with him without us. So that’s what life was like with our two families. And I’m grateful for it because it changed my life. It was Martin who represented good people and poor people and Brown people and people of goodwill.”

While we know them as Ralph and Martin, their given names were different.

“My dad’s name was Ralph David Abernathy,” Abernathy said. “He was born David and his name didn’t become Ralph until he signed up with the military when he was 16-years-old, when he was drafted right after he graduated from high school. And Uncle Martin’s real name was Michael, not Martin. So he called my father ‘David’ and my father called him ‘Michael.’  And they had this little thing between them.”

The relationship between Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King was almost symbiotic. Their strong personal relationship allowed them to be who they needed to be on the national stage.

“I can never forget when we moved from Montgomery, Alabama,” Abernathy recalled. “We moved from Montgomery to Atlanta because Uncle Martin demanded it. He would call every single day and say, ‘You ought to come to Atlanta.’ And my mother was like, ‘We’re not moving to Atlanta until my husband has a church.’ My dad left his job at Alabama State where he was a dean. And so mother insisted, ‘We’re not leaving. We’re Alabamians.’ I was born in Montgomery. My mother was born down there. And so Uncle Martin said, ‘Granddaddy — he called him Granddaddy, Granddaddy King — will find him a church.’ So they found him a church. My mother still refused to move. And so my dad went commuting to Atlanta to the church to be with Uncle Martin. Sure enough, we moved to Atlanta. And the day we arrived, the King family helped us settle into this house that we would be living in.”

Next issue: The beginning of a deep friendship