NAMES IN THE NEWS : Woman Sues Abernathy for Book
A woman who claims the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy implied in his new book that she slept with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. the night before he was slain has filed a $10-million libel suit.
The lawsuit filed Monday in Federal Court names Abernathy; Harper & Row, the publisher of “And the Walls Came Tumbling Down,” and Harper & Row editor Daniel Bial.
“Everyone in Memphis knew that Dr. King had been at my house the night before his assassination,” Adjuda Abi Naantaabuu, a beautician in the Tennessee city, said in a statement released by her lawyer. “Dr. Abernathy’s book has cast shadows on my character. Even my own granddaughter asked me whether I had had an affair with Dr. King.”
In the book, Abernathy wrote that he awoke from a nap in a woman’s living room after a late-night dinner on April 3, 1968, to see King and the woman emerge from a bedroom.
Calls to Abernathy’s home and office went unanswered today.
Steven Sorrentino, a spokesman at Harper & Row, said: “We have not yet been served by a complaint, so we really have nothing to comment on.”
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