CNN.com - Coretta Scott King dies - Jan 31, 2006
Born in Marion, Alabama, on April 27, 1927, Coretta Scott graduated as valedictorian of her high school class and attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She received a B.A. in music and education and then studied concert singing at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She got a degree in voice and violin, according to her official biography.
While there, she met a theology student at Boston University, Martin Luther King Jr. They married on June 18, 1953, in her hometown of Marion.
As the young pastor began his civil rights work in Montgomery, Alabama, Coretta Scott King worked closely with him, organizing marches and sit-ins at segregated restaurants while raising their four children: Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther III, Dexter Scott and Bernice Albertine.
in "Freedom Concerts," singing and reading poetry to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization which Dr. King led as its first president.
The family endured the beating, stabbing and jailing of the civil rights leader, and their house was bombed.
After an assassin's bullet killed her husband in Memphis in 1968, Coretta Scott King turned her grief into the nurturing of her husband's legacy.
She spoke out "on behalf of racial and economic justice, women's and children's rights, gay and lesbian dignity, religious freedom, the needs of the poor and homeless, full employment, health care, educational opportunities, nuclear disarmament and ecological sanity," her biography on The King Center's Web site said.
"She wore her grief with dignity," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a civil rights leader. "She moved quietly but forcefully into the fray. She stood for peace in the midst of turmoil."
Quite a life. I may disagree with her politics I honor her courage, intent and dignity.
Posted by Tim at January 31, 2006 08:10 AM
