Tattletale Memoir

Ralph David Abernathy was Martin Luther King Jr.'s closest adviser from the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott that sparked the civil rights movement to the Memphis motel where King was slain. He cradled the dying King in his arms and succeeded him as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Now Abernathy, 63, who was forced out as SCLC's president in 1977, has spilled the most intimate secrets to which his close association made him privy in his autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down.

The book, published by Harper & Row this month, confirms long-circulated reports of King's philandering. According to...