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ESPN Interviews Abernathy Family
About Michael Vick
By Wright Thompson, writer for ESPN
the Magazine
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An empty chair sits in a
ranch-style home in a city long divided. It's a
comfortable chair, positioned in front of a large
high-def television, and it belongs to Juanita
Abernathy, one of the last living heroes of the 1960s
civil rights movement.
She'll be here in just a moment to
talk about Michael Vick.
Until then, look at the family
photographs in Abernathy's den. There's her husband,
Ralph, with Martin in Selma. Uncle Martin, that's what her
children call him. There's Rosa Parks. There's her
husband with Lyndon Johnson as LBJ signs the Civil
Rights Act. There's Juanita marching, holding
signs, singing songs. Every step of the way, from
Montgomery to Memphis, the Abernathys and the Kings
walked hand in hand. And when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, it was
Ralph who lovingly held his dying friend's
head.
Iconic images like the
fingerprinting of Rosa Parks to LBJ signing the Civil
Rights Act and the men standing on the balcony of the
Lorraine Motel are part of the Abernathy family's
history.
 Juanita
Abernathy still lives in the same house where she and
Ralph lived during the 1960s. It was here that many
decisions of the civil rights movement were made.
So every time Juanita Abernathy
walks into a room (which she's doing right now, wearing
a light purple jacket) she does so with credibility. Her
opinions have weight behind them. She has been shot at
with rubber bullets in Belfast, Northern
Ireland, threatened by police in Jackson,
Miss. With the other photos, she keeps a framed picture
of her home that was bombed.
She sits down and tries to explain
why so many black people in Atlanta see racism behind the treatment of
Vick. It has very little to do with Vick and everything
to do with antennae sensitive “maybe even understandably
oversensitive” to injustice. It's based on years of bad
experiences with the legal system and with federal
agencies such as the FBI.
"They have created all sorts of
lies and fabricated all sorts of imaginary stories on
the leadership of the civil rights movement," she
says. "And they even bugged my bedroom. In this house. "
She leans back in the chair and
watches the television. Predictably, it's all Vick, all
the time. Montages of him playing. B-Roll of him walking
into a courthouse. An e-mail from a viewer is posted on
the screen. It's Lisa in Kansas.
"It is not a black or white issue
but an issue of animal cruelty," she writes. "Black,
white, Hispanic, it doesn't matter. Breaking the law is
breaking the law, and Vick shouldn't get any special
treatment because he is a football player. People need
to stop using race as an excuse."
Juanita Abernathy sits in her
living room as those words cross her screen. Here's what
she wants the e-mailer to know. In Atlanta, where the Old South lingers just
beneath a placid, integrated facade, everything is about
race. Just walk a few feet away and look at her family
photos. People's opinions about every new situation are
formed by the totality of their experiences. Animal
rights activists think it's about cruelty. Soured
Falcons fans think it's about tragedy in multiple ways.
African-Americans in Atlanta, according to prominent black
leaders, think it's about Vick not getting due process
because of the color of his skin.
Although it might not be about race
to Lisa in Kansas, it is to Juanita in
Georgia. Who's right? Can they both be?
Can an opinion formed by experience be wrong? Is it
possible to separate your future from your past?
These have long been the questions
that define Atlanta.
Sept. 22, 1906: Atlanta was thriving. A black middle class
had formed, and the city trumpeted itself as a New South
success story. In a single night, that changed. Local
newspapers reported four alleged assaults on white women
by African-Americans. The assaults might never have
happened. That didn't matter. A white vigilante mob
roamed the city, attacking and killing black men and
women, some by gunshots, others literally beaten to
death. Some of the bodies were mutilated and publicly
displayed. By official count, 25 African-Americans died,
though others put the total higher. Hundreds more were
wounded. The grandparents of the civil rights movement
were scared children that night, wondering why strangers
wanted them dead. Those memories would stick with them
forever. They would tell their children and their
children's children, urging them to never forget.
Although Atlanta has the largest upper middle class
of blacks in the United
States, in many ways it is still a
separated city.
Atlanta envisions itself "a city too busy
to hate." It is home to the largest upper middle class
of African-Americans in the country, and the average
black median income is nearly $10,000 higher than the
national average. It's ground zero for the hip-hop
industry. Some call it the capital  of Black
America. On any morning at the Thumbs Up diner, which
sits in the shadow of Ebenezer Baptist Church and attracts a diverse crowd, you
can imagine Atlanta has finally unlocked the riddle of
the New South, and become a city where the only color
that matters is green.
"There's no place in
America like Atlanta," says Kwame Abernathy, Juanita's
youngest son. "Black and white communities are
accustomed to seeing each other doing well. The
dealership is at least as accustomed to selling to
well-to-do white people as they are well-to-do black
people. Although the city is so segregated and racism
still exists, it's still a special place."
The Thumbs Up buzzes. There's an
energy here, just a block off Auburn
Avenue, the cradle of the civil rights
movement. Martin Luther King was born a football field
away and was a pastor at Ebenezer. Now there are bistros
and lofts lining the street. Abernathy points around
himself. If ever a city was made for a successful black
quarterback, it was this one.
"This is Atlanta," he says. "Mike Vick fit in."
But there are still two Atlantas.
The past isn't that distant here; on one street, there
is an empty lot where a home was bombed to keep a
neighborhood segregated in the '60s. The I-20 corridor
originally was built as a de facto moat that kept
African-Americans out of traditionally white
neighborhoods. A long and painful history lurks beneath
the surface, needing only a polarizing event to
resurface.
"Atlanta is still a very separated city,"
says Frank Ski, a popular morning radio host. Ski, whose
station, V-103, landed the only post-indictment
interview with Vick to date, offers an example: Local
clubs have different standards depending on if it's
going with hip-hop or Top 40.
"Tonight is black night, and it's
20 bucks to get in and 20 bucks to park," he explains.
"And tomorrow night is white night and it's free to get
in and five bucks to park."
The public restrooms opened to
African-Americans long ago in Hotlanta. Laws ended most
state-sanctioned racism. But you can't outlaw
feelings. Recently, Ski said he
was at a party for about 200 big shots in the hip-hop
industry. It was at a local upscale restaurant in a
trendy new development.
"I kept saying, 'Why am I here for
a black producers' party and they are playing
rock-and-roll music?' " he says. "And the manager
wouldn't change the music. That's the lunch-counter
situation. You can't say, 'Don't eat here anymore.' But
[they] can make it very uncomfortable for
you."
Vick's supporters believe in due
process with the same conviction PETA activists have for
their cause.
A Falcons fan joins the counter
protest to those calling for the quarterback to be
suspended.
 Enter Michael
Vick into this complicated racial truce. A week after
Vick was indicted, the Falcons finally held a news
conference at team owner Arthur Blank's swanky Buckhead
office. The public outcry had reached a fever pitch.
PETA protested outside. Cars honk and drivers waved to
the group. The condemnation seemed universal. "I've been
doing this 20 years," says Bill Long, PETA activist and
former Ohio State quarterback, "and I've never seen
anything like this."
Across town at the local NAACP
office, a different reaction brewed. The phones rang off
the hook: What are the leaders going to do about the
Michael Vick situation? Were they going to let people
treat Vick like he'd already been convicted just because
of the color of his skin? NAACP president R.L. White,
who is the pastor of a church with 14,000 members,
understands the outcry in the community. He is a product
of the civil rights struggle. As a child, he saw a cross
burned in his front yard. As a grown man, he shared a
friendship with Martin Luther King Sr. These memories
provide the foundation for his preaching and
activism.
"The one thing that I say is
everyone is welcome to their opinion," he says. "But my
opinion is this: Unless a person has a trial, he is not
guilty of anything. That is the fabric of our
country."
After services on Sundays, he
speaks with his parishioners. Many smell a conspiracy.
White says you have to understand what people have been
through before dismissing their theories. Yes, if Vick's
guilty, then he's done an awful thing. But let's wait to
see whether he's guilty. That's his point.
"For a lot of African-Americans,
who have in the past either been accused themselves or
seen people they admired not be given due process," he
says, "They are skeptical about proceedings against
well-known African-Americans."
White is sitting in his office at
the Mount Ephraim Baptist Church. The motto of the church is
"Healing and Reconciliation." He counsels so many people
every week that the wallpaper behind his desk is frayed
and worn away; he has reclined the back of his chair
against it in thought that many times. Maybe his
greatest dream is a time when every new day isn't
colored by days long past.
Atlanta isn't there yet.
"The things that are culturally
transmitted," he says, "we have to seriously begin to
break out of these cycles."
Aug. 15, 1945: For the past several years, a
coalition between black leaders and Mayor Bill
Hartsfield had secured a measure of peace and prosperity
in Atlanta again. The war against
Japan ended that day, and many
African-American veterans were coming home expecting a
better life. That night, a chilling message lit the
eastern sky. A newly re-formed Ku Klux Klan cut a cross
a football-field wide into Stone Mountain, mixing oil
and sand to make it burn. The makers of this fiery cross
said, according to Kevin Kruse's "White Flight," that it
was intended "to let the n------ know the war is over
and that the Klan is back on the market." A year later,
the first American neo-Nazi group was formed in
Atlanta, determined to take the fight to
black men and women. "What the Germans have done to the
Jews will be a mere tea party compared with what we are
going to do with them," its leader crowed.
The day Vick would have reported
for training camp “if he hadn't been otherwise occupied
with a hearing at a federal courthouse in
Richmond, Va.” a caravan of people from
Atlanta drove about a half-hour into the
country, to a little town named Monroe, Ga. They packed into the
First African Baptist Church there, commemorating the
anniversary of the 1946 lynching of four black people,
one of them pregnant. Five living suspects are still at
large. They are hidden by neighbors, both those who
silently approve their actions and those who are
afraid.
Marshals escort Michael Vick out of
the courthouse following his arraignment.
The minister begins with a prayer
that quickly builds to a crescendo.
"We come today asking You to shine
Your spotlight on those who are responsible for the
killings of our brothers and sisters," he says.
"Amen," the crowd responds.
"You got a spotlight that can shine
from heaven. You have a spotlight the FBI doesn't have.
We just ask You to shine Your spotlight."
"Amen."
"Take us all back to 1946."
The main speaker walks in through
the back doors of the church, making his way toward the
stained glass dove above the cross on the altar. He is
The Rev. Joseph Lowery. He's an 85-year-old civil rights
veteran. He helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott and march from
Selma to Montgomery. Now he's here.
"Give him a hand! Our leader."
Lowery lowers the microphone and
begins preaching. His voice is loud and unwavering as he
asks, "Where is the justice?"
Soon, he begins talking about the
case dominating the thoughts of Black Atlanta. The crowd
leans forward. Women fan themselves.
"I do not seek to excuse Vick," he
says. "Dogfighting is despicable. It smells of sadism,
savagery, and reflects the hardening of spiritual
arteries. It is cruel and betrays animals that show
humans affection and trust, and thus are easily led to a
bloody end. But that does not justify the violation of
human rights in the principle of presumed innocence. The
mad rush to execute Vick has been bloodthirsty
itself."
The crowd is in the palm of his
hand.
"I'm your brother," he says.
A constant murmur of "amens" and
"yeses" provides a rhythm section for his talk.
"Michael Vick is my son," he says.
"I've never met him. But he is my son."
 
The re-enactment of the last public
mass lynching on U.S. soil was held last month in
Monroe, Ga.
He steps away from the microphone
when he's done. The church erupts, the roar beginning at
the front, rolling toward the back like a thunderstorm,
then toward the front again. Everyone leaves the church,
bound for the site of the lynchings. They are staging a
re-enactment, on the exact day at the exact place at the
exact time, so people don't forget. A group has gathered
out on a country road, at the Moore's Ford bridge, on the border of
Walton and Oconee counties. White actors from
Atlanta have come to play the murderers;
their actions are based on eyewitness accounts of the
event, which is believed to be the last public mass
lynching on U.S. soil. As everyone waits for the
victims to arrive, Mary Babinston explains why she feels
compelled to participate.
"Everything is a race thing," she
says. "As a white person, my history books were: Dr.
King was a very nice man. There was none of this. To the
black community, terrorism has always been on our
soil."
She looks around at the wall of
pine trees on both sides of the road. "It's still the
Deep South in many ways," she says. "These
trees have seen a lot of s---."
Finally, a Buick approaches. The
four black victims are inside. The rednecks come out of
the woods, a dozen or so, brandishing weapons. Time
slows. The crowd goes silent.
"Get out of the car!" one lyncher
shouts.
"Get the f--- out of the car!"
One of the black men pleads for his
wife's life: "Let Mae go!"
The women are screaming now.
"Please don't hurt my baby."
The mob shows no mercy, dragging
them under the bridge, which has KKK spray-painted on
it, and to a little clearing, where the murders took
place 61 years ago. The lynchers line up their victims
and, with the four screaming and begging for their
lives, starts shooting. The sound of gunfire “actually fireworks in
a nearby forest”, echoes in the
clearing, a thousand little pops. Reports of the
incident say that one of the bodies had 180 shells in
it.
"Shoot 'em again!" the ringleader
screams. "Shoot the n------ one more time."
The people watching are totally
silent now. The murderers cut the baby from its mother's
womb. Then a woman wearing a white choir robe steps out
and begins singing, making her way toward the bodies. As
she sings Dr. King's favorite song, the first drops of
rain fall from the Georgia sky.
Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on,
Let me stand
I'm tired, I am weak, I am worn
Through the storm, through the
night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead
me home.
Sitting on his mother's shoulders,
a little child looks on in horror. He whispers, "Did
they kill the baby, too?"
Dec. 18, 1962: Once again, Atlanta seemed poised to make a peaceful
transition to the future. A year earlier, the schools
had been desegregated. Student activists were breaking
down Jim Crow, industry by industry. Mayor Hartsfield
had just coined the phrase, "A city too busy to hate."
Then a black doctor bought a home in a quiet
neighborhood called Peyton Forest, taking the first step into white
Atlanta. All hell broke loose. In
response, as Kruse's book and other sources detail, the
city erected 4-foot-high roadblocks at each entrance to
the neighborhood, walling the African-Americans out at
the dividing line between white and black
Atlanta. A battle erupted. Activists
protested. It was dubbed Atlanta's Wall. Someone destroyed it, and
local whites built it back the next morning. At night,
robed Klansmen patrolled the barricades.
Juanita and Ralph Abernathy (4th
and 5th from left) march from Selma, Ala., to the state
capital in Montgomery with Martin Luther King and his
wife, Coretta Scott King.
In the segregated South, people on
both sides of the issue had passionate feelings. Though
the laws have changed, many of those same feelings
persist.
Juanita Abernathy smiles when you
mention the barricade. She gestures out the window.
"A mile away," she says.
That doctor? He was a friend. She
remembers the wall. She remembers a lot of things. Like
one public restroom for black people. In the entire
city. She couldn't try on a hat; after it had been on
her head, white women wouldn't deign to place it on
theirs.
Now, that area is the upper-class
black part of town. The mayor lives there. So does civil
rights leader and famed politician Andrew Young. Hank
Aaron lives there. All of those people remember the
struggle. It's a struggle that continues despite more
than a generation past Jim Crow laws.
"Some people would say, 'Well, that
happened in olden days,' " Juanita says. "No, it
didn't."
Kwame, who is sitting a few feet
away, agrees. "We cannot forget the past until we have
fully and properly confronted the past," he says. "Some
people are like, 'Hey, man, why can't we just move on?'
It's because we haven't dealt with it properly."
The Vick montage continues on the
television. More experts. More people screaming for his
head. More gory details of the death of the dogs, death
by electrocution and by bodyslam. Before Vick first came
to Atlanta, she hadn't cared enough to watch
football. There was something about finally having an
African-American quarterback in town that excited her.
Maybe Juanita felt like it was a small realization of
the work she, Ralph and their friends had done.
"I come home from church," she
says, "and I sit in my stadium in the middle of my bed
and play ball. Or I will come up here and sit in my easy
chair and play ball. So nobody can criticize Michael
Vick."
There is a connection there. Vick
was a symbol for Black Atlanta, and now he's gone. That
troubles many in the community. Not everyone, but many,
especially those who have felt racism in their own lives
and find themselves attuned to it. Yes, he's created
many of his own problems, but the lens for viewing his
problems was created many years ago. And so the question
arises: Are people like Juanita Abernathy stuck in the
past or are they the only ones seeing the situation with
eyes wide open?
As quarterback for the Atlanta
Falcons, Vick once was the symbol for black
Atlanta. Now he faces "an electronic
lynching," Kwame Abernathy says.
"You would think that Michael Vick
is the largest criminal this country has ever
encountered, by the media play," she says. "The way they
have portrayed this, you would think he's guilty until
proven innocent because now it's his goal and his
responsibility to convince America that he's innocent."
Kwame, 36, reluctantly paraphrases
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, not exactly a
favorite of most African-Americans: "It's an electronic
lynching."
For more than an hour, Juanita sits
in her chair and tells stories. About the time the cop
in Jackson threatened to kill her, just for
trying to find her 5-year-old son a restroom. About the
fear permeating the days when they were all worried Dr.
King would get shot and she was afraid Ralph would go
down with him. She understands the world is a different
place, but it's hard for her not to ask: Where was the
universal outrage then?
"We place dogs above human beings,"
she says, "and there's something wrong with that
picture."
July 26,
2007: Kwame Abernathy finishes
breakfast, which he eats at the table next to Hank Aaron
at Thumbs Up. Then he gets in a car and drives through
Atlanta, toward the exclusive enclave of
Buckhead, first down Paces Ferry
Road, then Howell Mills
Road. Million-dollar mansions hide
behind a sentinel of trees; most homes have service
entrances. Kwame sees a black woman walking down the
side of the road. Even in a city as diverse as
Atlanta, she seems out of place here.
"That's somebody's maid," he says. Then he reveals
another secret of segregated Atlanta: the invisible bus stop in this
rich neighborhood. The maids have to take public
transportation to work. But the virtually uniformly
white residents don't want bus stops near their homes.
So there's an unmarked one, just for maids. And you'd
never even know it existed, except for one clue: a bare
patch of grass where the women wait.
Three members of the New Order
human rights group surround their leader at a large
table in a Buckhead restaurant. His name is Gerald Rose,
and he sponsors grassroots work here in the community,
much of it dealing with police brutality. The group's
current cause is Vick. After hosting one gathering at
the Georgia Dome, New Order is planning further rallies
to defend a citizen's right to due process.
"This thing," Rose says, "is way
bigger than Michael Vick."
Different forces brought the
members of New Order together; their views, like
Abernathy's, have been shaped by people and moments in
their past. Rotunda Nelson's son is serving 20 years for
robbing a store with a BB gun when he was a 15-year-old.
She thinks the system let her family down, and she wants
to keep other parents from experiencing the same kind of
hell. Rose's father was an activist before him, and he's
carrying on the family tradition. Sometimes, Rose wishes
he'd been alive during the golden era of the civil
rights struggle. When he talks to his fellow New Order
members, you can tell, in some little part of his
imagination, he thinks they are playing Ralph Abernathy
to his Martin Luther King Jr.
"You're seeing history in front of
you," he says. "I'm young, but I believe in old school.
It might mean going to jail to get your point
across."
Vick's sponsors were pressed to
drop his merchandise as protesters juxtaposed brand
names next to alleged crimes.
Protesters have pulled out all the
stops, picketing, bringing their dogs to rallies and
creating anti-Vick T-shirts for people and dogs.
Despite his sympathy for Vick's
plight, the quarterback's lack of good judgment gives
Rose pause. On one hand, Rose believes Vick is being
treated differently because he's black. On the other
hand, Rose is tired of the behavior of high-profile
athletes. And the allegations are shocking.
"I can't see him doing that," Rose
says.
"That's demented," Nelson
agrees.
"If he did do it, there are a lot
of people he needs to answer to," Rose says, "including
myself."
Rose's opinion of Vick is not based
on newspaper accounts or gossip. He has actually met
Vick. That's what he's basing his defense on. A local
boy named Hassan Reed was shot in a drive-by. Before
taking a round in the leg, this 8-year-old child worked
to get the other kids down on the ground, saving their
lives. Local groups called him a hero. When Vick heard,
he wanted to visit the kid, try to cheer him up. Rose
helped facilitate the meeting. These allegations don't
sound like the man he knows.
So, New Order became the first
organization to publicly support the NFL star. Its
target is a moving one. It isn't really animal rights
groups, or even white Atlanta. Certainly, some of white
Atlanta supports Vick, too, though
arguably because they are Falcons fans. New Order
leaders are aiming at people who formed their opinion on
Vick because of his race and not facts. They are
especially aiming at people and corporations who acted
on those opinions. They have boycotts planned for the
companies who bent to public pressure to drop Vick
pretrial. If he's found not guilty, they plan to push
for permanent boycotts of those companies. They have a
pro-Vick tailgate planned for the first preseason game.
They're asking fans not to go inside the dome.
"We want seats empty," Rose
says.
The group members finish their
meals, going over details for their next event. They
share food, stories and, in between, wonder how anyone
can't see that Vick is being targeted. He's just their
latest fight. Near him, Rose has a thick binder, filled
with newspaper clippings and other memorabilia. Each one
is about another injustice New Order has fought. They
fight because their fathers fought, because they see
inequality, because it's what they're trained to do,
because they like the attention they get from fighting.
They will tell their children and their children's
children, urging them to never forget.
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You are Visitor # 
Updated Wednesday
April 05, 2006 12:40:42
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