Coretta Scott King
Dies at Age 78
By AP from the
WSJ.com Online, January 31, 2006
ATLANTA -- Coretta Scott King,
who turned a life shattered by her husband's assassination into one devoted to
enshrining his legacy of human rights and equality, has died, former mayor
Andrew Young told NBC Tuesday morning. She was 78 years old.
Mr. Young, who was a former civil rights activist and was close to the King
family, broke the news during a phone call he made to the "Today" show. "I
was not expecting it. She has been ill for last few months. My first
reaction was she was ready to cross on over."
Asked how he found out about her death, Mr. Young said: "I understand she
was asleep last night and her daughter tried to wake her up."
Efforts by The Associated Press to reach the family were unsuccessful.
They didn't immediately return phone calls, but flags at the King Center were
lowered to half-staff Tuesday morning.
Mrs. King suffered a serious stroke and heart attack in 2005.
She was a supportive lieutenant to her husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.,
during the most tumultuous days of the American civil rights movement. She
had married him in 1953.
After her husband's assassination in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, she kept
his dream alive while also raising their four children.
She worked to keep his ideology of equality for all people at the forefront of
the nation's agenda. She goaded and pulled for more than a decade to have
her husband's birthday observed as a national holiday, then watched with pride
in 1983 as President Reagan signed the bill into law. The first federal
holiday was celebrated in 1986.
Mrs. King became a symbol, in her own right, of her husband's struggle for peace
and brotherhood, presiding with a quiet, steady, stoic presence over seminars
and conferences on global issues.
"I'm more determined than ever that my husband's dream will become a reality,"
Mrs. King said soon after his slaying, a demonstration of the strong will that
lay beneath the placid calm and dignity of her character.
She was devoted to her children and considered them her first responsibility.
But she also wrote a book, "My Life With Martin Luther King Jr.," and, in 1969,
founded the multimillion-dollar Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent
Social Change.
Mrs. King saw to it that the center became deeply involved with the issues she
said breed violence -- hunger, unemployment, voting rights and racism.
"The center enables us to go out and struggle against the evils in our society,"
she often said.
After her stroke, Mrs. King missed the annual King holiday celebration in
Atlanta in January 2006, but she did appear with her children at an awards
dinner a couple of days earlier, smiling from her wheelchair but not speaking.
The crowd gave her a standing ovation.
At the same time, the King Center's board of directors was considering selling
the site to the National Park Service to let the family focus less on grounds
maintenance and more on King's message. But two of the four children were
strongly against such a move.
Coretta Scott was studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music and
planning on a singing career when a friend introduced her to Martin Luther King,
a young Baptist minister working toward a Ph.D. at Boston University.
"She said she wanted me to meet a very promising young minister from Atlanta,"
Mrs. King once said, adding with a laugh, "I wasn't interested in meeting a
young minister at that time."
|
