This weekend in Atlanta, the city “too busy to hate,” there will be a meeting of the Southern Historical Association. Men and women, professors and graduate students will attend to learn about the latest scholarship on the American South, buy the latest books in the field, and visit with old (and new) friends.

There will also be a special conversation with Juanita Jones Abernathy, the widow of Dr. Ralph Abernathy, on Friday, beginning at 11:45 in Grand Salon East of the conference hotel, the Hilton Atlanta. Dr. Abernathy was co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and and advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Juanita Abernathy was an equally active participant in the Civil Rights Movement, participating alongside her husband in the most significant protests of the era including the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Selma to Montgomery March, and the Charleston Hospital Workers’ Strike of 1968.

This year marks the 80th Annual Meeting of the SHA, affectionately known as “the Southern.”