Coretta Scott King—Wife of Late Civil Rights Leader—Martin Luther King Jr., Has Passed Away: King Died at 78

The spread of civil rights movement and civil disobedience across United States in the 60s and beyond sparked by Rosa Parks’s refusal to give-up her sit to a Whiteman at this period created a climate which later precipitated to a 368 days bus boycott in Alabama and will become the gridlock for civil rights movement in America through out the 60s and beyond was incomprehensible. The trajectory was historical.

Martin Luther King, the young Baptist minister would not have mustered the swagger and support to make history in America alongside other civil rights leaders like—Malcolm X, W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington et al without the unwavering and undeviating support from their individual wives. Let it be said that Man for the most part, is nothing, without the undeviating companionship found in a good-Woman.

Coretta Scott King, who labored tirelessly to keep her husband’s dream for equity, equality, fairness for all Americans and all humanity alive with her grace, and calmness, that made her a symbol of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s creed of brotherhood and non-violence, passed away Tuesday, January 31, 2006. Coretta King was 78.

Information reaching my desk says that she passed away during the night at an alternative medicine clinic in Mexico: Remarks from her family:   

“The "first lady of the civil rights movement" died in her sleep during the night at an alternative medicine clinic in Mexico, Arrangements were being made to fly the body to Atlanta.”

According to reports she went through a serious stroke/heart attack she suffered last year. Her last appearance was on the evil of her late husband’s birthday. With shock and communication about her death led to sweeping tributes to King across United States and Georgia Capitol, with piles of flowers at the tomb of her slain husband. At the Institute King Center—flag were lowered to half-staff. 

As a former Student leader alongside other civil rights activists across the world, it is a duty to remember a mentor and a comrade and the bereaved family at this juncture. Former Mayor Andrew Young, one of Martin Luther King’s top aides, has this to say about Coretta King: “Coretta Scott King's fortitude rivaled that of her husband.”She was strong if not stronger than he was.”

Indeed, Coretta Scott King was a beacon light of hope to her husband during his most dangerous and tumultuous days of the civil rights movement. Even so, after his assassination in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, Coretta carried on his work while humbly raising four of their little children.

After King was assassinated Coretta made these remarks: “I'm more determined than ever that my husband's dream will become a reality." Coretta was on the case of politicians in Capitol Hill, to have her husband’s birthday observed as a national holiday which became reality in 1986.

By 1969, she founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia and this became a platform to confront racism, unemployment and other injustices in America. She often said: "The center enables us to go out and struggle against the evils in our society".

Coretta King also fought gun manufacturers and toy makers for promoting violence across United States and around the world. She indeed, became a symbol in her own rights as she confronted institutions that institutionalized and corporatized injustice in American and exported them around the world for money. She was poignant as she championed the cause of peace and brotherhood, quietly administrating with dignity over seminars and conferences. She will be missed dearly.

In the scheme of things civil rights will be incomplete without a trusted follower and comrades of King, Jesse Jackson. Jackson was with King, when her husband was assassinated. Jesse Jackson today remarked: “Coretta was a freedom fighter; she understood that every time her husband left home, there was the chance he might not come back.” "Like all great champions she learned to function with pain and keep serving," adding: "She kept marching. She did not flinch."

Monitoring this latest development from Washington, the President of United States, George Bush, praised her in these words: “a remarkable and courageous woman and a great civil rights leader." As it were, two weeks ago, she appeared with her children at an awards dinner. She was her usual-self smiling from her wheelchair but did not speak.  

Like every other social movement and other groupings, families quarrel and struggle during and after struggles. There were disagreements here and there amongst civil rights leaders in the past and today is no exception. For this reason, she always called for unity among groups in this regards. Currently, information has it  that there are divisions here and there even among her own children with respect to what to do with the King Center to the National Park Service whether to sell it or not. The turbulence has grounded the maintenance capacity and sustainability of King's message.

Officially, Governor of Atlanta Georgia, Sonny Perdue has ordered flags at all state buildings to be flown at half-staff and offered to allow King's body to lie in repose at the Georgia Capitol.

According to reports, King died at Santa Monica Health Institute in Rosarito Beach, Mexico. It is gathered that she had gone to California to rest and be with family.

During her youth, information has it that Coretta Scott was studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music and planning on a singing career when a friend introduced her to King, a young Baptist minister studying at Boston University.

In her own dispositions: “she said she wanted me to meet a very promising young minister from Atlanta," adding with a laugh: "I wasn't interested in meeting a young minister at that time." The duos dated a little just like other relationships. Coretta King remembered her first date: Martin Luther King said to her: "You know, you have everything I ever wanted in a woman. We ought to get married someday." By 1953, records show in a space of eighteen months later, they got married.

As civil rights movement was in full swing, the couple decided and moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where he became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and helped lead the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott set in motion by legendary Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus of a segregated South.  

With that campaign in motion, King began enacting his philosophy of nonviolent, direct action[s]. A movement that over the years, Coretta King experienced global presence with her husband in his finest hours—she was at his side as King Jr., was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

By 1965, in Selma, Alabama she marched beside King as this led and other circumstances reproduced a triumph of voting rights law in Montgomery.

As if that was not enough of this courageous woman, days after King’s death, she dropped into town, Memphis with their three siblings to campaign and lead thousands marching in honor of her slain husband and to keep pressure on the government and kept the movement alive. She remarked," I think you rise to the occasion in a crisis." "I think the Lord gives you strength when you need it. God was using us — and now he's using me, too."

Though there is always a bad news and bad that consumes all humanity—weakness. Weakness sometimes could be your strength. Accusation of womanizing against King was no longer a secret during the height of the civil rights movement.

To add injury to insult, just this past January, a new book, "At Canaan's Edge" by Taylor Branch resurgence, put back King’s infidelity back in on the globe. Stories has it that not long before King was assassinated, he confessed a long-standing affair to his wife while she was recovering from a hysterectomy. Whether lies or not, history will judge all of us one day whether good or evil.

In 1976, King family, particularly Coretta Scott King and her father-in-law, Martin Luther King Sr., were very visible when former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter ran for presidency. Achieves, show that when integration dispute at Carter's Plains church created a problem, Coretta Scott King campaigned at Carter's support the following day; Coretta was later named to serve in the U.S. delegation to the UN, when Andrew Young was the ambassador.

By 1997, she supported the trial of James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to killing Martin Luther King Jr., which, Mr. Ray later on recanted. She remarked before a judge thereafter: “even if no new light is shed on the facts concerning my husband's assassination, at least we and the nation can have the satisfaction of knowing that justice has run its course in this tragedy." 

Curiously, the trial never happened. By 1998 Mr. Ray passed away in the detention.

Friends and readers alike, Coretta King was born April 27, 1927, in Perry County, Alabama. Her father had a store. Through this store operation, her family managed and survived the Depression. Coretta also picked cotton and worked as a waitress to earn her way through Antioch College, Ohio.

By 1994, she stepped down as head of the King Center, passing the job to son Dexter, who in turn passed the job on to her other son, Martin III, in 2004. Dexter continued to serve as the center's chief operating officer. Martin Luther King III has also served on the Fulton County (Ga.) commission and as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC], co-founded by his father in 1957. Coretta King’s daughter, Yolanda became an actress and the youngest child, Bernice, became a Baptist minister.

By 1993, on the 25th anniversary of her husband's death, Coretta King remarked that the war in Vietnam that her husband opposed has being replaced by her actions against the central inter-cities gun lawlessness. She put it this way: “War in Vietnam has been replaced by an undeclared war on our central cities, a war being fought by gangs with guns for drugs." "The value of life in our cities has become as cheap as the price of a gun."

In 1969, she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with supporters at the same carved pulpit in St. Paul's Cathedral where her husband preached five years earlier in London. In her remarks: "many despair at all the evil and unrest and disorder in the world today," "but I see a new social order and I see the dawn of a new day." Whether she was right or wrong on that new social order remark is left for researchers and observers to articulate. But that as it may, she has served well.

Coretta Scott King was a powerful spirit, an inspiration to all young girls and young boys around the world. She was a powerful character, a dignified influence to our world. Coretta has moved on to another level of spiritual existentialism. The better part is that she was born great, lived great and died great. She will be remembered.

Adieu Corretta Scott King; and May your humble quiet soul blessed, with calm demeanor rest in perfect peace in Christ name, Amen!

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Carlisle U.O. Umunnah

Is a New York-based Freelance Writer

Contact: cuu1_liberties@yahoo.com

January, 2006

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All Copyright Reserved …

Robot  # 1 | 31.01.2006 19:43

Martin Luther King, the young Baptist minister would not have mustered the swagger and support to make history in America alongside other civil rights leaders like—Malcolm X, W.E.B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington et al without the unwavering and undeviating support from their individual wives. Let it be said that Man for the most part, is nothing, without the undeviating companionship found in a good-Woman. ...Read the full article.

unregistered  # 2 | 31.01.2006 20:29

May her soul rest in perfect piece ... Amen!

King Admirer  # 3 | 31.01.2006 20:49

May her gentle soul rest in peace. Amen.

gwobezentashi  # 4 | 01.02.2006 09:13

Goodnight sweetheart. Say us well to the King!

Palamedes  # 5 | 01.02.2006 09:23

My condolence to the King family. Goodbye Coretta Scott King, may you rest in peace. I would like to call on Africa governments to erect statues in Africa and commission books on our heroes and heroines to remind us all of the hard work, pain and sacrifices these great African (Americans) made towards the emancipation of our brethrens in the West and the fallout in Africa and the rest of the world.

Odinaka  # 6 | 01.02.2006 09:49

Farewell to eternity, dear Coretta Scott King. Men will only be remembered for what they did while they sujourned on this planet called earth. Those whose achievements are only dishing out oppression to fellow humans always suddenly become infamous at their death, even when they may have been worshipped by a few sycophants in their life times. If people like Martin Luther King and wife, Nelson Mandela, and a host of others who were unflinching in their resolve to create a world where fairness and justice reigned were to live in our present day Nigeria, some of them would have been rounded up as treasonable felons, criminals and what have you. History will always be the judge

Naija for life  # 7 | 03.02.2006 09:23

Goodbye, valiant one. Although you might not have realized it while you were alive, we Africans greatly admire the struggle by you and your husband to create a world where blacks and other disenfranchised people can live with dignity. I hope that you are prepared for the shock you will receive in the place you are going to though. Where you are going, the color of your skin will not matter, and your only attribute will be the incredible works you performed in your lifetime, a consideration you earned with your selfless works and dedication to your husband's legacy. Farewell, African woman. Through thick and thin, you stood tall as an Iroko tree.

Sangoking  # 8 | 03.02.2006 10:17

May her spirit continue to guide and protect us - God bless!