The name Coretta Scott King often conjures up images of her husband Martin Luther King Jr, one of America’s most prominent black civil rights activists. But Coretta was much more than Mrs King, even if her actions were often hidden in plain sight. She was a witness and participant in some of the most important historical events of the 20th century.
Coretta Scott King’s popular image was largely divorced from her lifelong politics, as she was mostly celebrated in the media as “kind and gentle, obedient and a beautiful helpmate to her husband”, rather than as an activist in her own right.
Her activism began before her marriage, then complemented and influenced her husband’s political work, and continued long after his assassination in 1968. She did more than protect her husband’s legacy, she expanded it and consolidated its relevance. Moreover, Coretta Scott King’s activism as an advocate of tolerance built her own legacy and became a symbol of the struggle for peace and against all forms of discrimination.
When Coretta Scott King died on 30 January 2006, flags flew at half-mast in the USA. Her coffin was transported in a carriage to the Rotunda of Congress in Atlanta with the highest honours of state.
In 1968, when her husband Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, it was a different story. It did not occur to then Governor Lester Maddox, a staunch segregationist, to hold any kind of state ceremony for the late charismatic pastor who led the fight against prejudice.
Maddox and his supporters, fighting to preserve their privileges and believing in the superiority of the white race, from which they drew their pride, refused the governor’s suggestion to have King laid to rest in the Georgia State Capitol building.
Maddox did not suspend government operations for the day, but instead ordered 64 state troopers to guard the building to better protect “state property,” as he put it, because undercover agents from the Atlanta Police Department told him that participants from the crowd of mourners were planning to break into the Capitol premises.
When slavery was finally abolished in America after the end of the Civil War, it did not mean the abolition of racial hierarchy, and the abolition of slavery did not automatically bring about much better conditions for blacks. Abolition, and later the introduction of citizenship for blacks, broke down for many whites their natural order, according to which the essence of the black race was to serve the white race.
The constitutional prohibition of slavery in 1865 merely opened the way for other forms of domination, and this soon led to the legalisation of racial segregation in public spaces. A completely parallel economy and public life were established. Schools, bus and train lounges, waiting rooms, shops, restaurants and even water fountains were segregated along racial lines, all under the legal protection of Washington. The US military was also segregated, albeit under the banner of ‘separate but equal’.
Childhood in the American South
Coretta Scott was born on 27 April 1927 in Heiberger, near Marion, Alabama, where she grew up on the family farm in the midst of the Great Depression. These were difficult times for everyone, and especially for black people in the American South, because of unemployment and severe poverty.
After the abolition of slavery in America in 1865, the treatment of blacks improved for a while. But in 1881, southern states began to pass laws and judgments aimed at preventing blacks from voting, getting a basic education, owning land or running a business. They also passed laws requiring blacks to be as separate as possible from whites, so signs in all public places read “FOR WHITES ONLY” and “FOR BLACK PEOPLE ONLY”.
White elites dominated the political, cultural and economic space in the countries of the former Confederacy through the so-called Jim Crow laws.
Coretta was thus exposed to the injustices of a divided society from an early age: while white students were bussed to nearby schools, she walked eight kilometres every day, in all weathers, to a modest one-room schoolhouse in Marion. “The driver of the white children somehow managed to steer the bus in such a way that it kicked up dust and splashed mud at us, to the delight of the passengers who laughed at us,” Coretta recalled in an interview.
The school for black children had no electricity, no plumbing, no library and, unlike the whites, they had to pay for their textbooks. The white children attended classes for nine months, while the black children – hundreds of pupils crammed into one room – attended for only seven months of the year.
Coretta was learning about a world that looked down on her simply because she was black.
Despite the daily obstacles of extreme racism, the Scotts were a proud, strong and hard-working family. Little Coretta was luckier than many other African-American children because her father, Obadiah, owned a farm that allowed the family to put food on the table even in the worst of times.
Despite persecution and hard times, he was never bitter. He worked in a sawmill and, through hard work, saved enough money to buy a truck and then transported logs for his boss. He also earned money by cutting hair in the evenings and at weekends, collecting and selling scrap iron and doing other odd jobs to earn extra money.
He was the only black man who had his own truck and was hated and even threatened with death by the poor whites who saw him as competition for money. Obadiah took the threats calmly, convinced that there was something good in every man. The racial pressure on him was relentless, but it never broke him. At the same time, the peace-loving Scott was aware of the danger, and every time he went into the woods to load logs, he would say to his wife, “I may never come back.”
Unlike Coretta’s father, who usually blamed the situation, not the people, for the often brutal treatment of black people by whites, her mother Bernice was more resentful of racists. She had a pioneering spirit that was at odds not only with white expectations of black women, but also with those of black men. She refused to differentiate between male and female jobs, because she was convinced that she could also do traditionally male jobs. She learned to drive a truck and years later became one of the first women in their community to drive a school bus, which put her at even greater risk of harassment by white men.
Obadiah and Bernice, through pain and sacrifice, forged the values of faith, hard work, service, leadership and honesty and passed them on to their three children.
They lived in a modest wooden house with a porch and two interior rooms, a kitchen with an open hearth and a bedroom with two bunk beds. Water was provided by a well in the yard. Their most valuable piece of furniture was one of the first gramophones, a Victrola, and after a hard day’s work in the fields the family spent much time listening to a large collection of records including spirituals, gospel, jazz and blues. They also had a few books from which their mother read to them every day.
Corette lived in an all-black community that was kinship bound. She adored her two years older sister Edythe, who was a real bookworm, and her three years younger brother Obie, who could expertly fix anything that was broken or broken. She was a workaholic herself, always in search of new tasks and projects.
Since they had no money for games or toys bought in the shop, the children made them themselves. One of their favourite pastimes was swinging or climbing trees. There were other things they wanted to do, but they had to accept that they were forbidden. There were no recreational facilities for black children and although there was a swimming pool in Marion, black children were not allowed to use it. Instead, Coretta tried to learn how to swim in the pond and almost drowned. The experience was so terrifying that she never learned to swim as an adult.
Coretta’s grandfather, Jeff Scott, and grandmother, Cora, owned three hundred acres of land, which, more than anything else, instilled in the Scotts racial pride, self-respect and dignity. They were independent, as independent as blacks could be in the racist South.
From the age of six, when she could barely hold a hoe, Coretta worked the family fields with her mother, sister and brother. They grew corn, peas, potatoes and garden vegetables. They also had pigs, chickens and cows.
When the economic crisis worsened in the late 1930s and Coretta was about ten years old, she and her sister started working as hired help picking cotton, as the extra money in the house supported their hopes of getting an education. The girls worked from sunrise to sunset, twelve hours in the scorching sun.
To make sure Edythe didn’t fall behind as they hoed the long rows of cotton, the skillful Coretta, often came to her sister’s aid in her row and then returned to her own.
Somewhere over the rainbow
Coretta’s mother, who was part American Indian, placed great importance on education, as working on the farm meant she could only attend school up to the fourth grade, and then only three months a year. She believed that blacks could only gain respect through education. Even in the 1950s, Bernice, who sounded like today’s feminists, constantly told her daughters, “If you get an education and try to become somebody, you won’t have to depend on anybody – not even a man.”
At that time, the ideal husband took care of his wife as if she were his property. The wife was there to cook and clean the house and bring up the children. Coretta was fascinated by the idea that even as a woman, she could have her own goals beyond mere dependence on a man – even though she wanted to marry and have children.
Bernice was determined that her children would get an education, even if she had to sacrifice to the extent of having only one dress to wear. Despite the lack of money, no one in the Scott family ever complained.
Corette dreamt that something wonderful was waiting for her in life and she listened for hours to Judy Garland singing about a place somewhere over the rainbow. She hoped that there was such a place for her too. “Remote in the southern countryside, black and female, I didn’t see many things that pointed to a bright future – except my parents’ upbringing. Most of the signals I received from the outside world were red lights warning me to stop, to walk away from my dreams.”
After finishing sixth grade, the children were allowed to continue their education in secondary school. There was a high school for blacks in their community, but Bernice wanted her children to go to the best school possible. She found a way to send her daughters to Lincoln Normal School, a semi-private high school founded by former slaves and supported by the American Missionary Association in Marion.
The AMA, an anti-slavery society founded in 1846 by Congregational ministers and laymen, provided one of the best educations for blacks in the South. Lincoln College was racially mixed, and the white professors were dedicated to all and treated black students kindly. This is why most white Marion citizens looked down on the teachers and disparagingly referred to them as “nigger lovers”.
During Coretta’s years at school, there were no dormitories in Lincoln and the daily commute from Marion to Lincoln would have been too taxing, so she had to stay with other families to attend school.
In Lincoln’s classrooms, she finally felt accepted and worthy, which made her very happy, but when she found a job as a domestic worker for a white woman in Marion to supplement her parents’ financial support, her employer expected Coretta to be obedient, to serve and bow and use the back door. These demands made Coretta feel unworthy, and if she agreed to her demands, it would mean that she agreed with her negative assessment of black people. The young girl was not a submissive and submissive type of person and this employment of hers did not last long.
Many of her professors impressed her and showed her the kind of person she wanted to become, but one in particular, music teacher Olive J. Williams, became Coretta’s first role model outside her family. Ms Williams introduced her students to the world of classical music and introduced them to composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin. She played recordings by influential black performers of the time: Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes and Dorothy Maynor. Coretta began to fantasise that she herself could have a career in music.
On Thanksgiving night 1942, Scott’s house was burned to the ground by white supremacists. Running for their lives, Obadiah and Bernice grabbed Coretta’s brother Obie, fought their way through the door and fell to the grass.
Coretta and Edythe were absent because they were rehearsing for a performance with the school choir. When they returned, they found that all they had left was a pile of smouldering embers. They had escaped the flames with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, and the groom’s cries nearly broke Obadiah’s heart.
Nevertheless, he showed nerves of steel and instead of cursing the racist whites, he called on the family to give thanks for having survived and to pray for those whose home had been burnt down. He went to work as if nothing had happened, no doubt looking into the faces of the arsonists, refusing to give them the satisfaction of thinking that their evil deeds might make or break him.
After the fire, the Scotts lived with Bernice’s parents for a while, and eventually Obadiah saved money to buy some land and build a new house. He also saved enough money to do something that was unheard of in the mid-1940s for a black man trying to survive – he bought a local sawmill. Scott had owned the sawmill for about two weeks when a white forestry worker came to him and offered to buy it. Obadiah turned him down, and the inevitable happened: within a few days, the sawmill was burnt to the ground.
Scott was again transporting logs in his truck, setting an example to his family not to hate.
Going off to college
For the Scotts, as for thousands of other African-American families, their church was the centre of their social life. Because of the shortage of black ministers in the South, they held services every other week at Mount Tabor AME Zion Church. On the remaining Sundays, children and adults attended Sunday School and had a short prayer service, usually led by Coretta’s grandfather, Jeff Scott.
Coretta’s love of music and her future career were born in her home church, which also served as an escape and a refuge from the humiliations of daily life. She and Edythe often sang duets, and by the age of fifteen Coretta was already leading the choir and accompanying him on piano.
Miss Williams of Lincoln School spotted the young girl’s musical talent and helped her develop into an accomplished singer, performing ambitious soprano solos in the school’s annual performance of Handel’s Messiah. Coretta learned to play the piano, violin and trumpet.
She soon realised that she had to move north if she wanted to get a quality education. After finishing her studies at Lincoln School, she followed her sister Edythe to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a private liberal arts university. As a straight-A student, Coretta received a “full” scholarship, which helped her to cover all the costs associated with her studies and living expenses.
There, her horizons were broadened as she met people of different races, cultures and religions. She had two white roommates, which was unthinkable in the South. In this diverse and peaceful environment, the young student began to dream of a world where all people were welcome and could live in peace and harmony.
College offered Coretta many challenges. She had to do a lot of supplementary work because, although she was the best student in primary and secondary school, she was not sufficiently prepared. As a newcomer, she had to look up practically every other word in the textbooks, as her vocabulary was very limited, but Coretta, with great effort, eventually made up for what she had missed.
There were only six black students at the college at the time Coretta was attending, and they were welcomed warmly by the white students, but the young black girl was aware that many of the white students felt slightly superior to her just because they were white and she was not.
Coretta was the first black student to study primary education. Students who studied education at Antioch were required to teach one year at a private elementary school in Antioch and one year at a public school in Ohio. Coretta taught music at Antioch for her first year. But when she was ready to teach in a public elementary school the second year, she ran into a problem: although the schools in Yellow Springs were integrated, the teaching staff was all white and did not want a black teacher in their school system. Even an appeal to the school board did not help and Coretta was rejected. She later found out that the president of the school board had a black dog named Nigger.
Coretta had the choice of teaching in a segregated black school in one of the neighbouring towns or another year at a school in Antioch. Not wanting to deal with segregation, she chose to teach at Antioch. Although she accepted the compromise, she was disappointed and upset. More determined than ever, she decided to do something about the situation.
She joined all the associations that helped people who had been mistreated: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Committee on Race Relations, and the Committee on Civil Liberties. She also took an interest in promoting world peace and joined a Quaker peace group.
Meanwhile, Coretta continued her studies at Antioch, enjoying music more than anything else. The head of the music department at Antioch was a black professor, Walter F. Anderson, the only black member of the college at the time. He soon became her second musical idol, after Miss Williams at Lincoln High School.
Anderson became Coretta’s mentor and prepared her for her first public concert, which she gave in 1948 at the Second Baptist Church in Springfield, Ohio. The concert was well received and was the first of many concerts the talented singer performed while at Antioch.
Coretta also faced a painful scenario in her love life when, in her first year at Antioch, she encountered interracial dating for the first time, something that could never have happened back home in the South, where mixed sexuality was forbidden and punishable by imprisonment. Even in the North, the practice was ahead of its time.
Walter Rybeck was a Jewish boy and Coretta’s piano accompanist. After two years of dating, they were thinking of getting married. They were worried about the racial and religious identity of their children. Would they be half-Jewish, half-Christian, half-black, half-white? The thought of the many hurdles they would have to cross made them uncomfortable.
They soon had an experience that answered their question about whether they could be happy as an interracial couple. After another successful performance, Walter called his parents and arranged for them to meet at a restaurant in the city. When he happily came to tell Coretta, Coretta reminded him that this was not possible because, as a black woman, she did not have access to white people’s restaurants.
When his parents arrived, they ate elsewhere, but the experience depressed the young couple, giving them an insight into what an interracial marriage would be like and the challenges they would face if they stayed together. As this was too much “baggage” to carry, they separated.
A budding musician and pastor’s wife
Coretta graduated with a degree in early childhood education but changed her future plans because, as a black teacher, she was not allowed to teach in public institutions. She was encouraged to study singing full-time by Paul Robeson, with whom she sang at an NAACP event. She began to consider a career like his, successfully combining musical pursuits and social activism.
Before Coretta graduated from Antioch in 1951, Walter Anderson, the head of the music department, who also recognised her singing potential, advised her to apply to the prestigious Boston Conservatory of Music, where she was accepted.
The main problem was the lack of money to continue her education. She could have asked her parents for help, but Coretta wanted them to enjoy the fruits of her labour instead of financing her dream. To pay for her room and board, the young music student cleaned her landlord’s house and did other odd jobs. While she was on her knees cleaning the staircase, her mind was on the stage, where her arias rang through the concert halls.
Coretta studied solo singing with Maria Sundelius, a Swedish soprano from the golden age of the American Metropolitan Opera, and also took lessons in French, Italian, piano, violin, music history, conducting, harmony and other subjects.
She was happy in Boston.
While studying, she met Martin Luther King Jr., who was pursuing his doctorate in theology at Boston University. At first she resisted the relationship, believing that her ultimate vocation was a singing career, not to be the wife of a narrow-minded preacher. At 169 centimetres, she found Martin too short and rather uninteresting.
But King kept asking her out and was determined to marry her because he saw in her all four qualities that he wanted in a future wife: good character, a strong personality, intelligence and beauty.
It turned out that Martin was funny, but he was also an excellent dancer and, like Coretta, loved classical music. Coretta was very touched when, on one of their dates, he took her to a concert by the great pianist Arthur Rubinstein at the Symphony Hall in Boston, something she could not afford to do herself, despite her great desire to do so.
They talked about values, morals and philosophy, and it was clear that they agreed on all the important things; on other issues they thought they could agree. When they discussed marriage, Martin made it clear that he expected his wife to be intelligent and well-educated, but to be a housewife and mother to their children.
Coretta felt that this was a waste of a woman’s talent, creativity and energy and spent six long months deciding whether to accept Martin’s proposal. Once she had made up her mind, she changed her course of study at the Conservatoire from performing arts to music education, so that wherever she and Martin lived, she could supplement the family income by teaching.
Corette and Martin were married on 18 June 1953, a year and four months after they met. Daddy King, as Martin’s father was called, conducted the ceremony on the lawn in front of the house the Scotts had built on the site of Coretta’s birthplace, which had burned down years before. The young bride had decided to omit the traditional phrase about “obedience and submission” to her husband from her wedding vows, and she was worried that this break with tradition would anger Daddy King, Martin, or both. To Coretta’s surprise, neither of them objected, understanding that times were changing.
Since there were no hotels in the South that would accept blacks, the newlyweds King spent their wedding night in a funeral home with a friend who happened to be an undertaker.
After Coretta’s schooling, the Kings moved to Montgomery, Alabama, in September 1954, where Martin accepted a pastorate at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and Coretta took on many of the duties of a pastor’s wife. She taught Sunday School and sang in the choir, using her formal musical training to make it one of the finest choirs in Montgomery. She also had the opportunity to perform in concerts at several churches and at meetings in surrounding towns.
Coretta refused to settle for the undemanding role of pastor’s wife and soon became Martin’s active partner. Meanwhile, Martin was dividing his time between completing his doctoral thesis and his church duties.
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Montgomery
The King couple’s lives seemed to complement each other. Martin had always said that he wanted eight children and, after some consideration, Coretta offered to compromise with four.
Their baby girl, Yolanda (Yoki) Denise, was born on 17 November 1955 at St. Jude’s Hospital, a Catholic institution that was the only hospital in Montgomery where blacks were treated with a modicum of respect. At St. Jude’s, blacks and whites were segregated unless the hospital was overcrowded. In those days, racial prohibitions were ignored and babies were allowed to breathe as equals for the first time – at least for a moment.
In the segregated South, there was something about childbirth, especially the first one, that tore at the heart and forced one to confront a painful reality. As Coretta held her baby, so tiny and vulnerable, she reflected on some of her past years and wondered if the same harsh conditions awaited Yoki. Would one day, when she went to school in her pretty, clean dress with matching ribbons in her hair, a yellow school bus full of taunting white children would maliciously splash mud on her, as they had done to Coretta? In prayer, she asked God how she could protect her from inhuman evil.
It seemed to her that God must have listened to her. In less than two weeks, Rosa Parks, a dignified seamstress, was arrested for violating city ordinances by refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger, and the movement that would become the King couple’s life’s work began.
The response of the black community was one of deep indignation, which manifested itself in an unprecedented 381-day boycott, although there had been worse atrocities such as the Rosa incident before. After half a century of pain and humiliation, the cry “We have put up with it long enough” finally rang out on 5 December 1955 and swept through the black community with the power of the national anthem.
The arrest of the seamstress was the final humiliation and the black residents of Montgomery immediately organised in defence of Mrs Parks and, led by Martin Luther King, organised a boycott of the city buses which drew the world’s attention to the injustice of segregation in the USA.
Although Coretta was unable to help outside their home because of the baby, their home initially served as the headquarters of a new group called the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), and it was the young pastor’s wife’s responsibility to answer the phone, which rang incessantly, and to cook meals for the non-stop meetings.
The boycott quickly became personal for Coretta. By the end of January 1956, the Kings had received several hostile and threatening telephone calls, which they believed to be empty threats, even though they were aware of the extreme danger.
It was about half past ten in the evening and Coretta was having a relaxed conversation with her friend Mary Lucy in the front room. Her two-month-old daughter Yolanda was asleep in her cot in the back room. Suddenly, they heard a loud crash, as if someone had thrown a brick on the porch. Before the friends could run to the back room, a bomb exploded on the porch. The explosion shattered the door and the window glass, leaving a cloud of billowing white smoke.
The noise startled the baby, who woke up crying. Coretta ran to her and took her in her arms, then she and Mary Lucy crawled out of the house in the choking smoke, among the broken glass and pieces of wood. The two friends saw a large hole in the front wall and a porch half-hanging. The chair and sofa on which the friends had been sitting shortly before the explosion were torn to pieces, even the paintings on the walls were shattered.
Coretta thanked God that they were alive. A few steps had saved their lives.
Martin, who was speaking in a nearby church, soon came home. By then, an angry crowd had gathered outside, growing by the moment, and the parish was so full of people that Martin had difficulty getting in. The mayor had arrived, but the police could barely contain the crowd.
For Martin, the bombing was the first test of his understanding of the Christian-Gandhian principle of non-violence. His home had just been bombed, his wife and child could have been killed, but he calmly told the excited crowd of about 300 people, ready for revenge, that everything was fine with his family and asked them to go home, because retaliation was not an option.
As soon as their parents heard about the bombing, they took action. Early the next morning, Coretta’s father Obadiah and Daddy King drove from their homes to Montgomery. They were on a mission with one thing in mind: to save the life of a young family and bring them home.
As a child, Coretta watched her father face white terrorism. She had never faced her own test of endurance, but she decided to stay. Martin needed her.
No black man who grew up in the Deep South escaped the reality that whites could take the life of a black man without any repercussions. But Coretta’s fear of death, which she had known since childhood, left her that night, overcome by faith.
In the end, the bus boycott led to victory. On 13 November 1956, the Supreme Court declared that Alabama’s laws requiring segregation on buses were unconstitutional. For the first time, blacks could sit where they wanted on public buses and ride with dignity.
Martin and Coretta were delighted, but realised that many other unjust laws needed to be changed.
On 5 December 1956, Coretta organised a benefit concert at the Manhattan Center in New York to raise money for the Montgomery Improvement Association. At the concert, entitled “Salute to Montgomery”, she sang classical, spiritual and freedom songs. She told the story of Montgomery, the civil rights movement and the long history of oppression suffered by different groups throughout history. She performed to a packed house with star musicians Harry Belafonte and Duke Ellington. The concert was a success, raising 2000 dollars for the cause.
Winds of change
Time magazine featured Martin’s story on its cover in February 1957, and the media’s recognition of his commitment to non-violent civil disobedience led to him being celebrated as the President of Black America.
After the bus boycott, blacks in other cities began to speak out against unfair treatment. More and more of them took part in the civil rights movement and fought for the right of all black citizens to fair and equal treatment.
Martin Luther King, who soon became the most famous face of the movement, emphasised in speeches he gave across the country that peaceful protest was the only way to bring about lasting change. He built a reputation as a social justice warrior and, as President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organisation that promoted non-violent protest, he embarked on a decisive struggle for civil rights.
The charismatic King led protest marches in many cities, and Coretta, who inspired both black and white citizens to defy segregation laws, walked alongside him.
Her husband’s fame spread beyond the USA and he was increasingly seen not only as a leader of the American civil rights movement, but also as a symbol of the international struggle to free human beings from racism and other forms of oppression.
In early March 1957, Martin and Coretta King travelled to Africa to witness the changes that were sweeping the black continent, to celebrate Ghana’s independence. Their trip was symbolic of the growing global alliance of oppressed peoples.
At the inauguration ceremony, the former imprisoned leader of Ghana’s elected government, Kwame Nkrumah, and his ministers wore prison caps to symbolise their struggle for Ghana’s liberation. The Ghanaian experience was a great stimulus to the dream that black people in America could one day decide their own destiny.
Two years after Martin narrowly survived an assassination attempt – he was stabbed in the chest by an unbalanced black woman at a book signing in Harlem – he and Coretta made a pilgrimage to India to honour the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, who had inspired their philosophy of non-violence. When they returned five weeks later, they were more convinced than ever that non-violent resistance is the most powerful weapon a minority has at its disposal in the struggle for equality.
The King family moved to Atlanta in 1960 so that Martin could devote himself fully to the work of the ever-expanding Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Coretta no longer had to answer all the letters that arrived at their address herself, so she turned her attention to collecting tapes, newspaper articles and Martin’s speeches, convinced that all this material would one day be of historical value.
The success of the bus boycott made the blacks even more determined to end segregation wherever it existed, and the next target was restaurants and cafeterias. Four brave young and well-mannered students from Greensboro, North Carolina, tried to order coffee in a cafeteria but were ignored. Although they were not served, there was no incident in the beginning. The black students soon organised protests, which they called “sit-ins”, every day in cafeterias all over the city and the US. They were determined to keep doing it until segregation was overcome.
Eventually, violence was unleashed on them and the students – but not the white people they attacked – were arrested. But whenever these young people were arrested or beaten, the next day more young black people were sitting in segregated cafeterias. Martin and Coretta were impressed by the young protesters and Martin joined them. As he and Coretta suspected, he was soon arrested.
The repeated unjustified arrests of her husband reached disturbing proportions, which became increasingly burdensome for Coretta. She began to doubt her own resilience as she felt she was losing control of her life. She suffered because she was aware of the danger that lurked for Martin behind bars, but at the same time she had to explain to their young children, who were being called “prisoners” by their peers, that their father was imprisoned because he was committed to righting wrongs, not because he had done something wrong.
Coretta attended a major international disarmament conference in Geneva in 1962 as a member of the peace activist group Women Strike for Peace, and was a strong influence on her husband’s stronger opposition to the Vietnam War.
By 1963, the Kings had four children: after Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott and Bernice Albertine.
Coretta balanced motherhood, work in the movement, and speaking engagements before church, civic, university, fraternal, and peace groups.
She eventually had to expand her role as an occasional concert singer to include public speaking at rallies that Martin could not attend.
To help raise funds for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Coretta staged a number of so-called Freedom Concerts at some of America’s most prestigious concert venues, featuring songs and recitation of poetry interwoven with stories from the history of the Civil Rights Movement.
A test of courage
Despite Martin Luther King Jr.’s acquaintance with President JFK and his brother Robert, then Secretary of Justice, in 1963, after Martin’s famous I Have a Dream speech at the big protest rally in Washington, the eyes of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, were on the Baptist preacher. Under the pretext of suspecting that King was linked to the Communist movement, they began to tap his telephone conversations. Thus, more or less by accident, the Bureau stumbled upon proof that King was far from a moral paragon in his love life.
The hunt culminated in a blackmail dispatch sent to the King couple. The FBI sent Coretta audiotapes of her husband’s alleged infidelity, and Martin a not-so-convincing anonymous letter from a “disillusioned follower” urging him to commit suicide before information about King’s degeneracy and perversion became public.
Despite the fact that the FBI had allegedly audiotaped several instances of Martin’s infidelity, Coretta refused to ignore any attempts to discredit her husband. She claimed that Martin “was no saint”, but his faults were limited to things like taking off his pyjamas and leaving them on the floor.
The tragedy of Kennedy’s death on 22 November 1963 affected Coretta deeply. When it was announced that the President had died, Martin was strangely silent and when he spoke again, she was chilled by his words: “This is exactly what is going to happen to me.”
Coretta suspected she was right, because Martin’s job was more dangerous than the President’s. If they could kill the President, Martin had little chance of survival.
Kennedy’s funeral prepared Coretta to accept what she knew in her heart would be the fate of her family.
In 1964, in the days of constant danger from the struggle for justice, the King couple received exciting news. Martin Luther King Jr. had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Coretta, who had accompanied her husband to Oslo, felt pride and joy, but also pain when she thought of the additional responsibilities Martin would have to shoulder, and that was her burden too.
That same year, Coretta and Martin celebrated the victory of African Americans when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. This law outlawed segregation in hotels, restaurants and other public places, and gave blacks the right to vote.
Although blacks already had the right to vote, Southern states imposed bureaucratic barriers such as literacy and history exams, and the high poll tax made it almost impossible to register to vote.
In March 1965, Martin led a 40-day protest march against unfair voting laws, in which marchers walked 87 kilometres from Selma to Alabama’s capital, Montgomery. Coretta was proud to march with her husband and hoped that the protest would help bring about change.
Their wish came true when President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which stipulated that no state shall interfere with a citizen’s right to vote.
On an ordinary day in March 1968, Martin Luther King sent his wife beautiful but artificial red carnations. Coretta was taken aback by the silk flowers, but Martin explained that he wanted to give her something she could keep forever. They were his parting gift.
A few weeks later, on 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, where he had travelled to support black sanitation workers who were on strike to demand better wages.
Harry Belafonte, singer, actor, activist and a very good friend of Coretta’s, suggested she finish Martin’s work. Her strength and determination lifted the spirits of thousands of desperate protesters when she joined them and her three eldest children on a march the day before Martin’s funeral.
Coretta’s courage in the face of her husband’s death was compared by the media to that of Kennedy’s widow Jacqueline. But unlike Jackie, who did not want to be the centre of attention, Mrs King chose not to be just a silent widow.
She continued to fight for human rights with deep commitment, enriching King’s legacy even as she created her own. She took her late husband’s place at a peace rally in New York, but soon asked African-American entertainer and activist Josephine Baker to take Martin’s place in the civil rights movement. Baker’s friend refused after some consideration, saying that her twelve adopted children were too young to lose their mother.
King’s widow was often asked to run for political office or accept a political appointment. Feeling that this would make her a kind of tool of the government, she repeatedly refused such offers and continued her independent activism, which was supported and actively participated in by her children.
In 1985, Coretta Scott King and two of her four children, Bernice and Martin Luther King III, were arrested outside the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C., protesting against the country’s policy of racial segregation. Ten years later, Coretta stood by Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg when he took the oath of office as President of South Africa.
President Clinton invited Mrs King to witness the historic negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat at the signing of the 1993 Middle East Peace Accords.
Coretta has taken the message of non-violence and social justice to almost every corner of the world. “They may have killed the dreamer,” she once said of Martin, “but they will never kill his dream.”
Coretta Scott King died in 2006 at the age of 78, and her funeral was attended by more than 10,000 people, including US Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George HW Bush and Jimmy Carter.
The legacy of a woman with a dream
A famous picture from King’s funeral shows Coretta sitting in the pew, dressed in black, stoic and veiled. In many ways, she was trapped behind this veil and portrayed as a kind of martyr mother figure who was supposed to redeem the nation by sacrificing her husband. “I sound like the attachments that come with a vacuum cleaner,” Coretta once said. “Martin’s wife, then Martin’s widow, a single mother with four children, a leader … all these things I am proud to be. But I was never just a wife or a widow. I have always been more than a label.”
Coretta Scott King believed in her struggle and that is where her strength came from. After her husband’s death – often criticised by people who felt she should have been pursuing other social interests – she dedicated herself to building the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change and to making 15 January, King’s birthday, a national holiday. She succeeded in both.
The King Centre, completed in 1981, is located in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and includes the Ebenezer Baptist Church, King’s birthplace, his tomb and the Freedom Hall complex. Thousands of people visit the Centre each year to learn about the civil rights movement, its leader Dr King and the philosophy of non-violence.
Since 1986, Americans have celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day on the third Monday of every January to commemorate his life and legacy.
Pastor King Jr.’s dream in his famous speech was not just his dream, for those magnificent words of his are still regarded today as some of the greatest and most groundbreaking words in human history.
In the 1940s and 1950s, blacks dared not even dream of equality before the law. They could not sleep in their own beds without fear of being burned by white vigilantes. They could not enter the front door of a candy shop without being chased out the side entrance. When a white person approached, the blacks had to step off the sidewalk and hang up. It was the narrow door through which Coretta entered as a young girl. But because of her activism, her faith, and her aspirations, it was no longer the same door through which she left.
She always had a keen sense of history, which is why she believed and often quoted Horace Mann’s admonition, “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
