Nation mourns death of 'extraordinary woman'
Graceful civil-rights matriarch, who rose above the pain of her husband's assassination to lovingly promote his legacy, dies at 78BY AUDRA D.S. BURCH
aburch@MiamiHerald.com
Coretta Scott King built a legacy from pain and progress, first as the wife who stood tall next to a man bent on changing the ways of this land, then as a widow veiled in delicate black lace, and finally as the curator of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream.
The woman who transformed the somber Memphis moment of her husband's assassination into a resolute, four-decade salute to his legacy of a just social order, died in her sleep early Tuesday at Santa Monica Hospital, a holistic health center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, 16 miles south of San Diego. She was 78. Daughters Bernice and Yolanda were with her.
Just at dawn, flags were lowered to half staff at the King Center in Atlanta, the living memorial she founded to honor her husband of 15 years.
''We have lost an extraordinary woman, someone who never stopped the fight for racial equality and social change,'' says Marc Morial, the national president of the Urban League whose parents were friends of the Kings. ``She was one of the punctuation points of the Civil Rights movement.''
Always quiet about her failing health, King had suffered a stroke and heart attack last August. A steadfast and graceful presence at philanthropic and civic events, she last appeared at a benefit earlier this month in Atlanta but was in a wheelchair and did not speak.
King's body was returned to the United States Tuesday. Funeral details have not been finalized.
A stream of admirers remembered King as dignified and ardent, unwavering and private, a woman who lost her husband in the early chapters of her story, raised four babies alone, fought to protect her Dear Martin's memory and never swayed from the vision of racial parity or the campaign to honor him with a national holiday.
''I'm more determined than ever that my husband's dream will become a reality,'' King said soon after his murder.
YOUNG WIDOW
In some ways, King's life was fuller than what one might expect from a young widow and mother who was educated and trained as a classical singer but left to struggle alone in the midst of the Civil Rights movement. She easily could have settled into the iconic, formal life of perpetual grief. But like Betty Shabazz and Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widows of Malcolm X and Medger Evers respectively, King chose action, chose life.
She chose to rise above the emptiness of April 4, 1968 -- the day her husband was assassinated on a Memphis hotel balcony -- and summoned strength to lead another generation. Most broadly, Coretta Scott King was a homegrown, enduring symbol of the possibilities of the South at the height of its raw, complex struggle with race relations.
The Kings were complements. He had extraordinary power and magnetism and hope. She had an extraordinary reservoir of faith that he could succeed and endurance to carry the message into history.
''Coretta Scott King was a woman of immense dignity and a moral statute. She continued her husband's work in a very persuasive and compelling way,'' says Harry Watson, director of the University of North Carolina's Study for the American South. ``She was outspoken but not an overt activist. She didn't go into cities and turn them upside down, but she was a figure that reminded us of what needed to be done, what needed to change.''
Even in her death 2,130 miles from home, there is hope.
''It's bleak because I can't -- many of us can't hear her sweet voice but it's great because she did live, and she was ours,'' poet Maya Angelou said on ABC's Good Morning America. ``I mean African-Americans and white Americans and Asians, Spanish-speaking -- she belonged to us and that's a great thing.''
She was born April 27, 1927, in Perry County, Ala., where her father ran a country general store. She grew up on a farm and picked cotton to help her family during the leanest years.
Coretta Scott, who graduated first in her high school class in 1945, was studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music and intent on a singing career when a friend introduced her to a young Baptist minister studying at Boston University. ''She said she wanted me to meet a very promising young minister from Atlanta,'' King once said, adding with a laugh: ``I wasn't interested in meeting a young minister at that time.''
MARRIED
Eighteen months after their first date -- June 18, 1953 -- the Kings were married at her parents' home in Marion, Ala. She wore a blue dress.
From the very beginning, Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King dreamed big.
The couple moved to Montgomery, Ala., where he became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and famously organized the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, among the first demonstrations to test his nonviolent doctrines.
Coretta Scott was his greatest believer, follower and lieutenant, particularly during the most stormy hours. Even as allegations of his infidelity brewed, King stayed next to him, stayed next to his memory.
She dismissed such allegations in David J. Garrow's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1986 book, Bearing the Cross, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, pointing to ''the very high-level relationship'' she had with her husband.
Coretta Scott was there in good times too, there when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and there when he marched from Selma, Ala., into Montgomery in 1965 in the push for a voting-rights law.
ASSASSINATION
Three years later, King was shot on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis. He was there to help lead a garbage worker strike.
Only days after his death, she flew to Memphis with three of her children to lead thousands marching in sadness and to plead for his cause.
''I think you rise to the occasion in a crisis,'' she once said. ``I think the Lord gives you strength when you need it. God was using us -- and now He's using me, too.''
A year later, King founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, which led the fight against the social ills that often breed violence.
''The center enables us to go out and struggle against the evils in our society,'' she often said.
And for more than a decade, King fought to see her husband's birthday observed as a national holiday. It was first celebrated Jan. 20, 1986.
In her later years, King became an advocate against those -- toy manufacturers, filmmakers, video producers -- who profit by glorifying violence.
In between traveling the globe and preaching the gospel of equality, King also brought together diverse groups for common causes. She formed several organizations dedicated to human rights. She was a goodwill ambassador and an advisor to world leaders, including Nelson Mandela. Later this year, the Kings are to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously.
In 1994, King stepped down as head of the King Center, passing the job to son Dexter, who in turned it over her other son, Martin III, in 2004. There are four children in all -- Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter and Bernice.
Recently, the King Center's board of directors has been considering selling the site to the National Park Service to let the family focus less on grounds maintenance and more on King's universal message. Two of the four children are strongly against such a move. The issue has not been settled.
But for now the family is united by their loss, as is much of the human community. Says former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, a close family friend: ``Her spirit will remain with us just as her husband's has.''
This report was supplemented with material from Miami Herald wire services.
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