Most remember her as Martin Luther King Jr.’s wife, but she was much more than that. Devoted in all aspects of her life, Coretta Scott King worked hard and had unwavering perseverance. Coretta’s outstanding accomplishments still influence our society today. She has changed our world with her actions, which have had positive effects not only on African Americans, but on all citizens of the United States.
Born on April 27th, 1927, Coretta Scott was raised in Heiberger, Alabama with her parents and three siblings. Her parents owned a grocery store, trucking company, filling station, and a chicken farm that was several hundred acres. She helped her family bring in income by working in her parent’s cotton fields. She also tended the family’s gardens, fed the pigs and chickens, and milked their cows. She even witnessed her father build a business, just to have it broken down by white people. Coretta’s youth was filled with hardships, but even so, she pushed through each and every one.
Coretta Scott faced segregation and discrimination throughout her education. During her early years of schooling, Coretta walked to her school no matter the weather, while other white students were bused off to better facilities and teachers. Until Coretta’s parents saved enough money to afford to send her to a church school, she had attended a local colored school with outdoor restrooms and in worse condition than other white facilities. Coretta later attended Marion Lincoln High School, where she decided that she wanted to pursue a career in music. Coretta graduated as a valedictorian of her class and then left for Yellow Springs, Ohio, to enter Antioch College. To pay for her room and board, Coretta worked as a maid at a boarding house. There at Antioch, Coretta became the first black to major in elementary education, even when the Yellow Springs board had refused Coretta the possibility to teach in their school system for the second year of her internship. The students were integrated, but the faculty of the school system was all white. Because of this, Coretta chose to stay at Antioch for her second year of internship. Coretta later earned a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, and transferred there to fulfill her dream of becoming a classical singer. She graduated in 1954 with a bachelor’s degree in music. Coretta had worked hard to seek a career in music, but in the end, she placed her love for the man that would be her husband, Martin Luther King Jr., before her dream.
When Coretta was in college, she met the man that would soon be her future husband and partner; Martin Luther King Jr. When she first met Martin, she thought of him as a short and non entertaining man. But once they got to know each other, they realized they both had a lot more in common than they thought. After they dated for a couple of months, Martin wanted to marry Coretta; but Coretta hesitated. If she chose to marry Martin, then she would have a different career than her dream as a classical singer. Her sister, Edythe, finally convinced her that she should marry Martin if she loved him. But Martin’s father had other plans for his son; he wanted his son to marry a middle-class girl from Atlanta. Thankfully, Coretta was able to stand up to her future father-in-law and promise him that she would be a gift to his son’s life. The couple was married on the lawn of Coretta’s parent’s home in Marion, Alabama on June 18th, 1953, but they didn’t have their honeymoon in Mexico until 1958. Coretta and Martin later had four children: Yolanda (Yoki) Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott, and Bernice Albertine. Once Marin Luther III was born, Mr. King was able to come back home from his job to spend a couple days with his third child. And when Martin had to leave again, Coretta didn’t complain. She knew that as civil rights activists, she and her husband would have to make sacrifices.
In marrying Martin, Coretta took up the role to become a great civil rights activist alongside her husband. She helped the civil rights organizations in many ways, one of which included performing ‘Freedom Concerts’ to help raise funds for the Civil Rights Movement and the SCLC. Other times, she would give speeches all over the country, standing in for her husband. Coretta also led marches with Martin. With her husband at her side, Coretta had helped to lead the five-day Selma to Montgomery march. She was devoted and involved in much of the work she and Martin did, and was even inside their home with one of her daughters when it was bombed. The entire front of their house had been blown up, but thankfully, neither had been injured or killed. Even with her life in danger, Coretta aided the Civil Rights Movement when she could. And when Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize, Coretta accompanied him to Orson, Norway. But all good things eventually come to an end. Her husband once told Coretta that he would never live to the age of forty years old, and her beloved husband was thirty-nine when he was shot.
Even after Martin’s death, Coretta continued to work for her beliefs of equal rights, no matter the skin color, race, or sexual orientation. Since her husband’s assassination, she became a symbol of the nation’s greatest grief and hope. Coretta led over 40,000 people in the march of mourning for Martin’s death. She persisted to forward the Civil Rights Movement, speaking in Washington D.C., leading marches, becoming president of The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and taking up leadership of the SCLC with Reverend Abernathy. She led the 20th anniversary March on Washington in 1983, and in 1986, supervised the first legal holiday in honor of her husband, which is now celebrated by over 100 countries! Coretta was also active in the peace movement, stood against apartheid, and supported disarmament. In 1985, Coretta and three of her children were arrested for protesting against apartheid in Washington D.C., and she even travelled to South America to protest against it. Coretta attended many more events, such as an anti-Vietnam rally in New York, the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, a demonstration of hospital workers on strike in Charleston, South Carolina, and visited a disarmament conference attended by 17 nations in Geneva, Switzerland, as a delegate for the Women’s Strike for Peace. After a long life of world changing work, Coretta Scott King finally passed away on January 6th, 2007, in Rosarito, Mexico.
A couple of days after Coretta’s passing, thousands of people stood in line at the Ebenezer Baptist Church to pay their respects to this amazing woman, even when sleet was pouring down. On her crypt is an inscription, one that describes and preserves the memory of her life’s work: “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” She is buried next to her husband at The King’s Center Hall Complex, which is still visited by hundreds of thousands of people from all around the world, even to this day…