Civil rights veteran revels in Obama victory

ATLANTA — The good china was lined up with military precision on a lace tablecloth draped just so. The wedding silver gleamed with a fresh polish. For this moment, the one she'd almost been afraid to hope for — but so long dreamed of — Juanita Abernathy would accept nothing less than perfection.

So the sangria lolled in a footed crystal punch bowl, coral roses crested atop sparkling vases, peanuts huddled in crystal bowls. Gentlemen wore jackets or suits, ladies looked fresh from the salon. Outside this westside Atlanta house, two huge Obama signs stood like heralds. Inside, the air was thick with cologne, the aroma of homemade gumbo, garlic bread and anticipation.

JOHNNY CRAWFORD/Cox News Service (enlarge photo) Juanita Abernathy , wife of Civil rights leader Ralph David Abernathy, jumps ups up and down as she celebrates Barack Obama becoming President of the United States.

Change was coming, and everyone in this house wanted to greet it with the very best they had.

"I've been up since 5 a.m.," Abernathy said over the din of two televisions relaying early state-by-state returns on Tuesday. Most places had only 1 percent of the vote tallied. Didn't matter.

"We are declaring victory right now! We're not waiting. Oh no, honey, God's in this thing tonight," she said as she dumped pound after pound of fresh shrimp into her gumbo.

In fact, she seemed more worried about the gumbo than the results rolling in on CNN. She didn't think she'd made that dish since her husband, Ralph David Abernathy Sr., died 18 years ago. This night was special enough to resurrect it.

Why all the fuss? You only had to look at the photographs crowding the walls and bookshelves to understand. They told the story of the stony, often bloody path that led to this night.

The four became friends and fellow warriors in Montgomery back in the mid-1950s. Juanita, Ralph, Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta. It was at Abernathy's massive oak dining table, now adorned with food and roses, that Ralph and Martin would often strategize. How could they get blacks the right not just to vote, but to live with basic civil rights and without fear? That perilous journey is documented in the black-and-white photographs on the paneled walls of Juanita Abernathy's great room: the four of them in Washington with a young Ted Kennedy; Ralph, Martin, John Lewis, deep in conversation; legions of blacks and whites marching arm-in-arm; charred hulls of buses where young people rode for freedom.

And then there is the grainy photograph of a house, it's front blackened and splintered. Dr. King's house after it was bombed?

"No, honey, that was our house back in Montgomery," Abernathy said. "Remember, they bombed Martin's house first, then ours."

Abernathy was at home that night with her toddler daughter, Juandalynn, and pregnant with her second child, Donzaleigh. Martin and Ralph were in Atlanta trying to birth the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

She pointed to a thick white pipe under the front of the house. It was the gas main.

"The gas man came by the next day and told me, 'Lady, if that dynamite had just been an inch closer to that line, your whole house would have gone up in smoke.' "

The bombers were never caught. "I don't even think the police looked," she said.

"OHIO!" somebody yelled, the present pulling her back from the past.

"We got Ohio?" Abernathy said. She jumped up and down, her voice as gleeful as a school girl's, her perfect salt-and-pepper hairdo beginning to wilt from the action. "You can't tell me we don't have a president! You have to win Ohio to be president!"

Before anymore battle grounds could be called, she rang a small brass dinner bell. Her 30 guests gathered around the big oak table, and Abernathy called on Clayton County Commissioner and former Atlanta Police Chief Eldrin Bell to bless the food.

But Abernathy was too busy to eat and kept going from the kitchen to the family room television, changing channels when one network wasn't projecting winners fast enough. Her daughters called long-distance to let her know they were watching, too. Sons Kwame and Ralph IV and their wives and children helped out with guests.

When clusters of young people appeared on the television screen, Abernathy pointed.

"I told you, it was the young people," she said. "This thing was led by the young people."

She was once "the young people," someone pointed out.

"And look what we did," Abernathy said. "We were pushing for what could happen in the future. We were community organizers and we changed America."

Then the voices on the television grew more urgent. VIRGINIA!

Forks dropped and people pushed forward.

And just after 11 p.m., that moment she thought she'd never live to see was there in plain words before her eyes: "Barack Obama elected president."

"My president! My president!" Abernathy screamed, as the room erupted around her. "Oh, can't you just see his little girls running and playing in the White House...."

She tried to steady herself, but the weight of it all knocked her back. She crumpled into a chair, weeping. Her words came choked and heavy.

"You don't understand, you don't understand. How much we suffered. Oh, Lord, Lord! We paid such a price for this...

"I want us to pray. I want us to pray that God will protect him because these are perilous times."

The bell chimed again. Hands moist with tears clasped together to form a big circle, and Howard Creecy Jr., senior pastor of Olivet Church in Fayetteville, found these words:

"...We thank you for our fathers and mothers who bled. Upon their blood we stand here today, upon their sacrifice we witness..."

The gathering said "Amen."

And "Yes We CAN!"

Rosalind Bentley writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.