Coretta
Scott King
April
27, 1927 - January 30,
2006
Coretta Scott was born in
Heiberger, Alabama and raised
on the farm of her parents
Bernice McMurry Scott, and
Obadiah Scott, in Perry
County, Alabama. She was
exposed at an early age to the
injustices of life in a
segregated society. She walked
five miles a day to attend the
one-room Crossroad School in
Marion, Alabama, while the
white students rode buses to
an all-white school closer by.
Young Coretta excelled at her
studies, particularly music,
and was valedictorian of her
graduating class at Lincoln
High School. She graduated in
1945 and received a
scholarship to Antioch College
in Yellow Springs, Ohio. As an
undergraduate, she took an
active interest in the nascent
civil rights movement; she
joined the Antioch chapter of
the NAACP, and the college's
Race Relations and Civil
Liberties Committees. She
graduated from Antioch with a
B.A. in music and education
and won a scholarship to study
concert singing at New England
Conservatory of Music in
Boston, Massachusetts.
In Boston she met a young
theology student, Martin
Luther King, Jr., and her life
was changed forever. They were
married on June 18, 1953, in a
ceremony conducted by the
groom's father, the Rev.
Martin Luther King, Sr.
Coretta Scott King completed
her degree in voice and violin
at the New England
Conservatory and the young
couple moved in September 1954
to Montgomery, Alabama, where
Martin Luther King Jr. had
accepted an appointment as
Pastor of the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church. They were soon
caught up in the dramatic
events that triggered the
modern civil rights movement.
When Rosa Parks refused
to yield her seat on a
Montgomery city bus to a white
passenger, she was arrested
for violating the city's
ordinances giving white
passengers preferential
treatment in public
conveyances. The black
citizens of Montgomery
organized immediately in
defense of Mrs. Parks, and
under Martin Luther King's
leadership organized a boycott
of the city's buses. The
Montgomery bus boycott drew
the attention of the world to
the continued injustice of
segregation in the United
States, and led to court
decisions striking down all
local ordinances separating
the races in public transit.
Dr. King's eloquent advocacy
of nonviolent civil
disobedience soon made him the
most recognizable face of the
civil rights movement, and he
was called on to lead marches
in city after city, with Mrs.
King at his side, inspiring
the citizens, black and white,
to defy the segregation laws.
The visibility of Dr. King's
leadership attracted fierce
opposition from the supporters
of institutionalized racism.
In 1956, white supremacists
bombed the King family home in
Montgomery. Mrs. King and the
couple's first child narrowly
escaped injury. The Kings had
four children in all: Yolanda
Denise; Martin Luther, III;
Dexter Scott; and Bernice
Albertine. Although the
demands of raising a family
had caused Mrs. King to retire
from singing, she found
another way to put her musical
background to the service of
the cause. She conceived and
performed a series of
critically acclaimed Freedom
Concerts, combining poetry,
narration and music to tell
the story of the Civil Rights
movement. Over the next few
years, Mrs. King staged
Freedom Concerts in some of
America's most distinguished
concert venues, as fundraisers
for the organization her
husband had founded, the
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference.
Dr. King's fame spread beyond
the United States, and he was
increasingly seen not only as
a leader of the American civil
rights movement, but as the
symbol of an international
struggle for human liberation
from racism, colonialism and
all forms of oppression and
discrimination. In 1957, Dr.
King and Mrs. King journeyed
to Africa to celebrate the
independence of Ghana. In
1959, they made a pilgrimage
to India to honor the memory
of Mahatma Gandhi, whose
philosophy of nonviolence had
inspired them. Dr. King's
leadership of the movement for
human rights was recognized on
the international stage when
he was awarded the Nobel Prize
for Peace. In 1964, Mrs. King
accompanied her husband when
he traveled to Oslo, Norway to
accept the Prize.
In the 1960s, Dr. King
broadened his message and his
activism to embrace causes of
international peace and
economic justice. Mrs. King
found herself in increasing
demand as a public speaker.
She became the first woman to
deliver the Class Day address
at Harvard, and the first
woman to preach at a statutory
service at St. Paul's
Cathedral in London. She
served as a Women's Strike for
Peace delegate to the
17-nation Disarmament
Conference in Geneva,
Switzerland in 1962. Mrs. King
became a liaison to
international peace and
justice organizations even
before Dr. King took a public
stand in 1967 against United
States intervention in the
Vietnam War.
On April 4, 1968, Martin
Luther King, Jr. was
assassinated in Memphis,
Tennessee. Channeling her
grief, Mrs. King concentrated
her energies on fulfilling her
husband's work by building The
Martin Luther King, Jr. Center
for Nonviolent Social Change
as a living memorial to her
husband's life and dream.
Years of planning, fundraising
and lobbying, lay ahead, but
Mrs. King would not be
deterred, nor did she neglect
direct involvement in the
causes her husband had
championed. In 1969 , Coretta
Scott King published the first
volume of her autobiography,
My
Life with Martin Luther King
Jr. In the 1970s, Mrs.
King maintained her husband's
commitment to the cause of
economic justice. In 1974 she
formed the Full Employment
Action Council, a broad
coalition of over 100
religious, labor, business,
civil and women's rights
organizations dedicated to a
national policy of full
employment and equal economic
opportunity; Mrs. King served
as Co-Chair of the Council.
In 1981, The King Center, the
first institution built in
memory of an African American
leader, opened to the public.
The Center is housed in the
Freedom Hall complex
encircling Dr. King's tomb in
Atlanta, Georgia. It is part
of a 23-acre national historic
site that also includes Dr.
King's birthplace and the
Ebenezer Baptist Church, where
he and his father both
preached. The King Center
Library and Archives houses
the largest collection of
documents from the Civil
Rights era. The Center
receives over one million
visitors a year, and has
trained tens of thousands of
students, teachers, community
leaders and administrators in
Dr. King's philosophy and
strategy of nonviolence
through seminars, workshops
and training programs.
Mrs. King continued to serve
the cause of justice and human
rights; her travels took her
throughout the world on
goodwill missions to Africa,
Latin America, Europe and
Asia. In 1983, she marked the
20th Anniversary of the
historic March on Washington,
by leading a gathering of more
than 800 human rights
organizations, the Coalition
of Conscience, in the largest
demonstration the capital city
had seen up to that time.
Mrs. King led the successful
campaign to establish Dr.
King's birthday, January 15,
as a national holiday in the
United States. By an Act of
Congress, the first national
observance of the holiday took
place in 1986. Dr. King's
birthday is now marked by
annual celebrations in over
100 countries. Mrs. King was
invited by President Clinton
to witness the historic
handshake between Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin and
Chairman Yassir Arafat at the
signing of the Middle East
Peace Accords in 1993. In 1985
Mrs. King and three of her
children were arrested at the
South African embassy in
Washington, D.C., for
protesting against that
country's apartheid system of
racial segregation and
disenfranchisement. Ten years
later, she stood with Nelson
Mandela in Johannesburg when
he was sworn in as President
of South Africa.
After 27 years at the helm of
The King Center, Mrs. King
turned over leadership of the
Center to her son, Dexter
Scott King, in 1995. She
remained active in the causes
of racial and economic
justice, and in her remaining
years devoted much of her
energy to AIDS education and
curbing gun violence. Although
she died in 2006 at the age of
78, she remains an
inspirational figure to men
and women around the world.
