Coretta Scott King Biography
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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.
****
Childhood
Coretta Scott was born on a farm in Marion,
Alabama to Obadiah and Bernice McMurry Scott. 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 attended the New
England Conservatory in Boston, where she met Martin Luther King Jr.
Adult Life
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 King (November 17,
1955,Montgomery, Alabama)
Martin Luther King III (October 23, 1957,
Montgomery, Alabama)
Dexter Scott King (January 30, 1961,
Atlanta, Georgia)
Bernice Albertine King (March 28, 1963,
Atlanta, Georgia)
All four children later followed in their
parents' footsteps as civil rights activists.
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.
Civil Rights Movement
Just two weeks after the birth of King's
first child, Rosa Parks was arrested on a Montgomery bus, helping spark
what would develop into the modern civil rights movement. King's husband
soon emerged as a major leader of the movement. The struggles that
followed included a narrow escape from death on January 30, 1956. King
and her daughter were home when the bomb exploded at the family's
residence; her husband was speaking at Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist
Church at the time.
Freedom Concerts
King later put together a series of Freedom
Concerts, which combined poetry, narration and music both to highlight
the movement and to raise funds for the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference.
In 1962, she served as a Women's Strike for
Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva,
Switzerland. In addition, she preceded her husband by two years in
opposing the Vietnam War, addressing a 1965 anti-war rally at Madison
Square Garden in New York City, while also serving as a liaison to
international peace and justice organizations.
Life after assassination of Martin Luther
King
Martin Luther King Day
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. Upon her return to the United States, she urged Reagan to
approve sanctions against South Africa.
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 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.
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,
compliment, 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.
She is a very good woman and will forever
be remembered for her outstanding achievements.
Programs & 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."
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
Final days
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. On January 14, 2006, Mrs. King made her last public appearance
in Atlanta at a dinner honoring her husband's memory.
Death
Mrs. King died in the late evening of
January 30, 2006 at a rehabilitation center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico,
where she was undergoing holistic therapy for her stroke and advanced
stage ovarian cancer. The main cause of death is believed to be
respiratory failure.
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 massive crowds 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. Presidents George W. Bush,
Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, their wives, with the
exception of Barbara Bush, and numerous other political figures attended
the service. In addition to the presidents, speakers included former FBI
director William Sessions, chairwoman of the National Council of Negro
Women Dorothy Height, poet Maya Angelou, Dr. Joseph Lowery, Atlanta
mayor Shirley Franklin, Attallah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X, Bishop
T.D. Jakes and former Ambassador Andrew Young. Music was provided by the
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and vocalists Stevie Wonder, Michael Bolton,
BeBe Winans and CeCe Winans. Bernice King delivered the final official
eulogy with Dr. Robert Schuller providing the closing benediction.
Some conservatives expressed
dissatisfaction with remarks made by several of the speakers, including
President Carter and Rev. Lowery, who were accused of injecting current
politics into the affair. Lowery, referencing King's vocal opposition to
the Iraq war, noted the failure to find WMDs in Iraq. Carter,
referencing King's lifelong struggle for civil rights, noted that her
family had been the target of secret government wiretapping. Their
comments were met with thunderous applause and standing ovations, as
President Bush looked on and smiled weakly.
King's funeral was protested by Fred
Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church, infamous for protesting at the funeral
of murdered gay man Matthew Shepard.
Mrs. King will be 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. She had expressed to family
members and others that she wanted her remains to lie next to her
husband's at the King Center. However, the mausoleum there was only
built for a single interment.
Tributes
President George W. Bush opened his State
of the Union address the night of January 31 by paying tribute to her.
On February 6, 2006, Bush issued a proclamation flags to be flown at
half staff throughout the day of King's interment, 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 Capitol. King also layed at historic Ebenezer
Baptist Church (where her husband was pastor).
The beginning of Super Bowl XL was marked
by a moment of silence in memory of King and Rosa Parks.
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
issued a press release honoring the memory of the Late Mrs. King. "Mrs.
King worked tirelessly after her husband's death in 1968 to carry on his
legacy of social justice activism. She was a steadfast ally in the
struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, and
was honored by the Task Force in 1997 for her support of the cause. In
addition, Mrs. King was a featured speaker at the Task Force's Creating
Change 2000, where she rallied hundreds of activists gathered for the
country's largest LGBT rights organizing conference. In 2003, her son,
Martin Luther King III, was personally responsible for inviting Task
Force Executive Director Matt Foreman to join Mrs. King to speak from
the podium at the 40th anniversary of the 1963 Civil Rights March on
Washington."
Senate Resolution 362
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.
House Resolution 655
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 government could build the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial
on the National Mall, considered one of the greatest tributes the
government can bestow upon an individual.
****
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URL of Original Article:
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Date Article Copied:
February 16, 2006
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