Coretta Scott King

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Coretta Scott King
Corettascottking.jpg
Born
April 27 1927
Heiberger, Alabama, USA
Died
January 30 2006
Playas de Rosarito, Mexico

Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 – January 30, 2006) was the wife of the assassinated civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., and a noted community leader in her own right.

During the Civil Rights era of the late 1950s and 1960s she worked alongside her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama to help spearhead the Civil Rights movement. Dr. King took up the helm of the civil rights cause during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, initiated by Rosa Parks historic act of civil disobedience, where the Kings were then living. Along with other black leaders of the time, such as Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young, the Southern Leadership Christian Conference was formed which appealed to the Federal government to challenge unjust and unconstitutional laws of desegregation. Coretta Scott King often worked behind the scenes with other wives such as Juanita Abernathy and Jean Young to lend support to the cause with the same spirit, purpose, and vision as their husbands.

In 1962 while Martin Luther King was involved on the national scene with the civil rights struggle Mrs. King, long interested in global issues of peace, traveled to Geneva Switzerland as a Women’s Strike for Peace delegate in order to influence atomic test-ban talks. She was a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

In 1964, a pinnacle year for civil rights, Mrs. King organized a series of freedom concerts, which combined poetry, narration and music both to highlight and to raise funds for the Civil Rights movement.

On April 4, 1968, four days after Martin Luther King was assassinated Coretta Scott King marched in his place in Memphis, Tennessee (in support of the sanitation worker’s strike.) An excerpt of the speech she gave to a stunned and grieving Americans reads:

  • And those of you who believe in what Martin Luther King, Jr., stood for, I would challenge you today to see that his spirit never dies and that we will go forward from this experience, which to me represents the Crucifixion, on toward the resurrection and the redemption of the spirit.

Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King, Jr. had four children - all active, themselves, with civil rights issues. They are: Yolanda Denise King, Martin Luther King, III, Dexter Scott King, and Bernice Albertine King.


Childhood and Education

Coretta Scott was born on a farm in Heiberger, Alabama. She was younger than her sister Edythe and older than her brother Obadiah Leonard (usually called Obie). Her parents were Obadiah Scott and Bernice McMurry . Though her family owned the land, it was often a hard life. All the children had to pick cotton during the Great Depression to help the family make ends meet. Graduating from Lincoln Normal School in Marion, Alabama at the top of her class in 1945, Scott went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. After graduation she won a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music to study vocal performance in Boston, where she met Martin Luther King Jr. [1]

Marriage

The Kings were married on June 18,1953 on the lawn of her parents' house the ceremony was performed by King's father. After completing her degree in voice and violin at the New England Conservatory, she moved with her husband to Montgomery, Alabama in September 1954 after he was named pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

The Kings had four children: Yolanda Denise and Martin Luther IIIboth born in Montgomery, Alabama (1955 and 1957) and Dexter Scott and Bernice Albertine born in Atlanta Georgia in 1961 and 1963. All four children would later follow in their parents' footsteps as civil rights activists.


Life after assassination of Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King Day

Coretta Scott King, along with Rosalynn Carter, Andrew Young, Jimmy Carter, and other civil rights leaders during a visit to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, January 14, 1979.

Over the years she was active in preserving the memory of her husband and in political issues. After her husband was assassinated in 1968, she began attending a commemorative service at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to mark her husband's birth every January 15 and fought for years to make it a national holiday, a quest that was realized in 1986, when the first Martin Luther King Day was celebrated.

Coretta Scott King attended the state funeral]] of Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1973, as a very close friend of the former president, himself a contributor to civil rights. She was also present when President Ronald Reagan signed legislation establishing Martin Luther King Day.

Opposition to apartheid

During the 1980s, King reaffirmed her long-standing opposition to apartheid, participating in a series of sit-in protests in Washington, D.C. that prompted nationwide demonstrations against South African racial policies.

In 1986, she traveled to South Africa and met with Winnie Mandela, while Mandela's husband Nelson Mandela was still a political prisoner on Robben Island (Carson 2006, Wiltz 2006). She declined invitations from Pik Botha and moderate Zulu chief Buthelezi [2]. Upon her return to the United States, she urged Reagan to approve sanctions against South Africa.

Animal Rights

King called her adoption of a vegan diet in 1995 a blessing. Her son, Dexter, had been vegan since 1988, saying that an appreciation for animal rights is the "logical extension" of his father's philosophy of non-violence.

Coretta Scott King Award

The Coretta Scott King Award, a medal presented by the American Library Association, is awarded to African American writers and illustrators for outstanding and inspirational educational contributions in children's literature.

The King Center

Established in 1968 by Mrs. King, The King Center is the official memorial dedicated to the advancement of the legacy and ideas of Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of a nonviolent movement for justice, equality and peace. [3]

Mission

As the institutional guardian of Dr. King's legacy, the King Center, in collaboration with other organizations, focuses on the following areas:

  • The development and dissemination of programs that educate the world about Dr. King’s philosophy and methods of nonviolence, human relations, service to mankind, and related ideas;
  • Building a national and international network of organizations that, through sanctioned programs, promote, complement, and help further the organization’s mission and objectives of building the Beloved Community that Dr. King envisioned
  • Functioning as the clearinghouse for non-profit organizations and government agencies which utilize Dr. King’s image and writings for programs and ensuring that the programs are historically and interpretively accurate;
  • Monitoring and reporting on the impact of Dr. King’s legacy on the world. [4]

Programs and services

The King Center has a wide variety of programs and services in place to fulfill the organization's mission of building Dr. King's "Beloved Community." [5]

These programs and services include:

  • The Beloved Community Network
  • Nonviolence or Nonexistence Online Learning Program
  • Re-Ignite the Dream Campaign: Building the Beloved Community through Service
  • King and the Modern Civil Rights Museum Scholar and Historian Research Program
  • The King Papers Project
  • Education through Exploration Visitor Services Program
  • Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Service Summit

Awards

Coretta Scott King received honorary degrees from many institutions including Princeton University, Duke University, and Bates College. She was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a noted African-American sorority.

Final days

Coretta Scott King's grave, Atlanta, Georgia

On August 16, 2005, King was hospitalized after suffering a stroke and a mild heart attack. Initially, she was unable to speak or move her right side. She was released from Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta on September 22, 2005, after regaining some of her speech and continued physiotherapy at home. Because of complications from the stroke, she was apparently unable to make her wishes known regarding the ongoing debate as to whether of the King Center would continue to operate independently or be sold to the National Park Service [6]. On January 14, 2006, Mrs. King made her last public appearance in Atlanta at a dinner honoring her husband's memory.

Mrs. King died in the late evening of January 30, 2006 [7] at a rehabilitation center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, where she was undergoing holistic therapy for her stroke and advanced stage ovarian cancer.

Funeral

Over 14,000 people gathered for King's six-hour funeral at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia, on February 7, 2006 where daughter Bernice King is an elder. The megachurch whose sanctuary seats 10,000 was better able to handle the expected crowd than Ebenezer Baptist Church where King had been a member since the early 1960s up to her death and which was the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral in 1968.

President Bush and many former U.S. Presidents and their wives attended. Numerous other political and prominent civil rights leaders attended the televised service, including the Governor General of Canada, Her Excellency, the Right Honourable Michaelle Jean.

Mrs. King was buried in a temporary mausoleum on the grounds of the King Center until a permanent place next to her husband's remains can be built.[8] She had expressed to family members and others that she wanted her remains to lie next to her husband's at the King Center, which will be altered to accommodate her re-burial there at some future date. [9]

Controversy surrounding funeral

Speeches at the funeral included criticism of policies closely tied to the Bush administration. Some felt the political commentary was inappropriate, although the comments echoed stated opinions of Mrs. King and were met with thunderous applause and standing ovations by most in attendence. In particular, Rev. Joseph Lowery referenced the failure to find WMDs in Iraq, and Jimmy Carter noted that the King family itself had been the target of secret government wiretapping.

King's funeral was protested by Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church, which is infamous for protesting at the funerals of gay people and outspoken supporters of gay rights. [10]

Tributes

President George W. Bush opened his State of the Union address the night of January 31, 2006, by paying tribute to her. On February 6, Bush issued a proclamation that [11] flags were to be flown at half staff throughout the day of King's internment, February 7.

King's body was returned to Atlanta and carried through the streets on a horse-drawn carriage to the Georgia State Capitol as the crowd threw roses at the casket and a lone bagpiper played "Amazing Grace"; King became the first woman and black person to lie in state at the Georgia State Capitol. (see [12]). King's body also lay at historic Ebenezer Baptist Church (where her husband was pastor).

Gay and Lesbian Rights

Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese made the following statement on the passing of civil rights leader Coretta Scott King. “Once in a lifetime God grants us with the ability to witness an extraordinary life dedicated to justice. With Coretta Scott King and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., God smiled on us and fortunately granted us two,” said Solmonese. “When her husband was killed, Mrs. King assumed her husband’s role as the guiding light that led the way toward a more equal nation. She performed that role with enormous grace and strength, never relenting in the movement for civil rights. She saw justice as a birthright and lent her voice as a relentless advocate for all fair-minded Americans, gay or straight, black or white. We join the nation in mourning the loss of a great hero and give enormous gratitude for all that she’s left behind. Often speaking of the importance of civil rights for gay and lesbian people, Coretta Scott King said in March of 1998, “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. ... But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’” Coretta Scott King also supported a federal bill prohibiting anti-gay discrimination."

A proposal before the Atlanta City Council (as of April 2006) would rename Atlanta's Simpson Street/Road after Mrs. King. [13] The road bisects the Vine City neighborhood, a long time residence of Mrs. King and, earlier, the King family.

Senate and House Resolutions

Upon the news of her death, moments of reflection, remembrance, and mourning began around the world. In the United States Senate, Bill Frist presented Senate Resolution 362 on behalf all U.S. Senators, with the afternoon hours filled with respectful tributes throughout the U. S. Capitol.

On January 31, 2006 following a moment of silence in memoriam to the death of King, the United States House of Representatives presented House Resolution 655 in honor of Mrs. King's legacy. The remembrances that followed were both emotional and poignant. John Lewis (D-Georgia) stated:

I first met Mrs. King in 1957 when I was only 17. I was a student in Nashville, Tennessee. She was traveling around America, especially in cities of the South telling the story of the Montgomery movement through song. She was so beautiful, so inspiring, she would sing a little, and she would talk a little, and through her singing and talks she inspired an entire generation.

In an unusual action, the resolution included a grace period of five days in which further comments may be added to it.

Criticism

Mrs. King was not without her detractors, particular concerning the King family's handling of her husband's estate. The licensing of Martin Luther King's speeches has caused concern about the reasoning behind limiting their availability. Mrs. King was also involved in the decision to demand licensing fees before the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity could fundraise for money to build the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall.

Notes

Quotes

  • "You have the conception of New Orleans jazz: group improvisation, cooperateive ensemble playing, which functions exactly like a democracy. Which means each person has the right to play what they want to play, but the responsibility to play something that makes everybody else sound good."
  • "When you are willing to make sacrifices for a great cause, you will never be alone."

External links

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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Persondata
NAME King, Coretta Scott
ALTERNATIVE NAMES King, Coretta; Scott, Coretta
SHORT DESCRIPTION civil rights figure
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH near Marion, Alabama, United States of America
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH Rosarito Beach, Mexico


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