Set this variable in your .afnirc. This information is from README.environment.
Variable: AFNI_IMAGE_ZEROCOLOR
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This variable, if set to the string name of one of the colors in the
color chooser menus (e.g., "Black"), will result in voxels whose value
is 0 being set to this color in the slice viewing windows (except when
viewing RGB images). The main function is to avoid having to use the
"Choose Zero Color" menu all the time, especially when you use the
"Swap" feature to invert the grayscale map (e.g., to make a T2
weighted image look sort of like a T1 weighted image).