Coretta Scott King

She picked cotton in Perry County, Alabama, and walked five miles to a one-room schoolhouse because no bus ran for Black children. White neighbors burned her father's sawmill down two weeks after it opened, when he refused to sell it. On Thanksgiving night in 1942 the family's house burned too. At Antioch College the local school board refused to let her do her required practice teaching in the Yellow Springs public schools, and she appealed to the college administration, which could not move the board. Then a scholarship took her to the New England Conservatory to train as a concert singer. That is why she was in Boston. She has said she hesitated over the marriage, because it meant giving the singing up.

Her own platform came out of the thing she had trained for. The Freedom Concerts she performed — prose, poetry and song — raised money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The peace work was hers alone. She helped found the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy in 1957 and went to Geneva in 1962 as a Women Strike for Peace delegate to the disarmament conference. She opposed the war in Vietnam before he did. Michael Eric Dyson calls her an earlier and more devoted pacifist than her husband, who limited her role and expected her to keep house.

She founded the King Center in Atlanta in 1968 and began raising money for it two days after her husband's funeral, then ran it as president for nearly three decades. She campaigned 15 years for the holiday, and stood beside Ronald Reagan when he signed it into law on November 2, 1983. The rest of the record was her own. Police arrested her at the South African embassy on June 26, 1985. She opposed the death penalty and the invasion of Iraq. From 1983 onward she argued that gays and lesbians belonged in the Civil Rights Act, told the movement in 1998 that homophobia was bigotry like racism and antisemitism, and in 2004 came out for same-sex marriage. Much of the Black church did not follow her. In December 2004 her daughter Bernice marched in Atlanta against it.

A stroke in August 2005 paralyzed her right side and took her speech. She died on January 30, 2006, at a clinic in Mexico, of respiratory failure from ovarian cancer, and became the first African American to lie in state at the Georgia State Capitol. Her family held the funeral at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, whose pastor had joined the 2004 march against same-sex marriage. Julian Bond refused to attend. Public memory still files her as a widow, and historians have pushed against it — the peace work, the concerts and the King Center were hers before, during and after the marriage, and reading her as the survivor of a great man loses the organizer she was.

Coretta Scott King's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The Freedom Concerts other
  Prose, poetry and song, performed to fund the SCLC 1964
• King Center for Nonviolent Social Change other
  She founded it and led it for nearly three decades 1968
• My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. book
  Her first memoir 1969
• Martin Luther King Jr. Day other
  The 15-year campaign that ended with Reagan's signature 1983
• My Life, My Love, My Legacy book
  Told to Barbara Reynolds and published 11 years after her death 2017

• 1942 aged ~15 The family house burns on Thanksgiving night Her father's sawmill had already been burned by white neighbors after he refused to sell it.
• 1945 aged ~18 Graduates valedictorian of Lincoln Normal School in Marion The nearest Black high school was nine miles off. Her mother drove the bus.
• June 18, 1953 aged 26 Marries Martin Luther King Jr. on her mother's lawn She had the vow to obey removed from the ceremony.
• 1957 aged ~30 Helps found the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy
• April 1962 aged 34 Goes to Geneva as a Women Strike for Peace delegate to the disarmament conference
• 1968 aged ~41 Founds the King Center in Atlanta She began raising the 15 million dollars for it two days after the funeral.
• November 2, 1983 aged 56 Reagan signs the King holiday into law with her standing by She had pushed for it since 1968. The first observance came in 1986.
• June 26, 1985 aged 58 Arrested at the South African embassy in Washington Two of her children were arrested with her.
• January 30, 2006 aged 78 Dies at a clinic in Rosarito Beach, Mexico Respiratory failure from ovarian cancer, five months after a stroke took her speech.

• Martin Luther King Jr. 1929–1968
  Baptist minister and civil rights leader whose nonviolent activism ended legal segregation in America. married to
• Rosa Parks 1913–2005
  Civil rights activist whose refusal to give up her bus seat sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. ally
• Bayard Rustin 1912–1987
  Civil rights strategist who organized the 1963 March on Washington and championed LGBTQ and labor rights. ally
• Ralph Abernathy 1926–1990
  Co-founder of the SCLC who led it after King was killed ally
• John Lewis 1940–2020
  Freedom Rider and congressman whose activism was central to the civil-rights movement and voting-rights legislation. ally
• Stokely Carmichael 1941–1998
  The SNCC chairman who made Black Power a national slogan opposed