The First Lady of Civil Rights Passes On | February 01, 2006

1-31-06

We of the IRFWP extend our sincere condolences for the loss of the great civil rights champion Mrs. Coretta Scott King. This First Lady of the Civil Rights exemplified through her actions, ideals, and integrity the true heart of equality, peace, and world betterment. She joins her husband now, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the next life, and leaves behind four children as well as a world that will not forget the King legacy and what their victories have meant for all of humanity.

Coretta Scott King, born and raised on her parents’ farm in Alabama, excelled in music and was valedictorian of her graduating class at Lincoln High School. Despite her personal achievements growing up, Coretta experienced from an early age the brutal injustices that separated her from the majority of society due merely to the color of her skin. In spite of the difficulties of growing up black in rural, south America, Coretta went on to study under scholarship at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she first began to take an active interest in the nascent civil rights movement. She graduated from Antioch with a B.A. in music and education, and won a scholarship to study concert singing New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.

It was by no mistake that such a capable and compassionate woman would be led to meet and wed one of the greatest hearts and voices of our time, and beside him take on an equally significant role in the development of racial equality in America. Coretta met Martin Luther King, Jr. when he was just a young theology student in Boston. After completing her degree at the Conservatory, the young couple moved together to Montgomery, Alabama where Martin had accepted an appointment as Pastor of the Dextor Avenue Baptist Church.

They were quickly swept up in the dramatic turn of events which soon led to the most intense times of the American Civil Rights Movement. Coretta marched beside her husband in parades and marches, as well as stood beside him at myriad rallies, speeches, and Sunday sermons. She withstood countless threats to her and her family’s lives, narrowly escaped when white supremacists bombed her home, and witnessed the country’s most vicious attacks against her race first-hand and close-encountered. Yet meanwhile she managed to maintain her role as mother to four children, and loving wife to her husband Martin, supporting him as he rose to become one of the most recognizable faces in the world.

Mrs. King was more than just a doting wife and mother. She conceived and performed a series of internationally-renown Freedom Concerts, fundraiser events which combined poetry, narration, and music to tell the story of the Civil Rights movement. A greater awareness was generated for the cause, and proceeds from the Freedom Concerts went to the organization her husband had founded, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Throughout the 1960’s, Mrs. King’s demand as a public speaker increased and her role in the movement became one of an almost motherly position. She was the first woman to deliver the Class Day address at Harvard, and the first woman to preach at a statutory service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Mrs. King also served as a Women’s Strike for Peace delegate to the 17-nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962. In addition, she became a liaison to international peace and justice organizations even before Dr. King took a public stand in 1967 against U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War.

After the death of her husband in 1968, Mrs. King vowed to continue her husband’s work, firstly by building the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. In 1974, Coretta King established the Full Employment Action Council, a broad coalition of over 100 religious, labor, business, civil and women’s rights organizations dedicated to a national policy of full employment and equal economic opportunity.

Throughout the years, Mrs. King continued her service in the name of peace and equality, traveling throughout the world on various goodwill missions to Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. In 1983, she commemorated the 20th anniversary of the historic March on Washington, by leading a gathering of more than 800 human rights organizations, the Coalition of Conscience, in the largest demonstration that the capital had ever seen up until that time.

In the 1990’s, Mrs. King was present for some of the world’s most auspicious peace occasions, including the historic handshake between Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman Yassir Arafat at the signing of the Middle East Peace Accords in 1993. She also stood with Nelson Mandela when he was sworn in as President of South Africa. In her final years, Coretta devoted much of her energy to AIDS education and to curbing gun violence.

The First Lady of Civil Rights was 78 years old at the time of her death. She returns now to her husband’s side, and leaves behind her four children and a world who will not forget the King legacy and what hers and her husband’s lives did for the betterment of all society.