In the late evening of January 30, 2006, Coretta Scott King died, leaving the world a much lesser and sadder place. The widow of the late Martin Luther King, Jr. was a noted activist and community leader in her own right. She died in Mexico, where she was undergoing holistic therapy from a stroke and advanced ovarian cancer. In almost cosmic poetic symmetry, she died on the very same date in the year that the world lost Mahatma Ghandi.
Coretta Scott King was born on a farm in Heiberger, Alabama and although her parents, Obadiah and Bernice McMurry Scott, owned the land, her life was a hard one. Growing up in the Depression, both she and her siblings had to pick cotton to help the family make ends meet. Still, Coretta shone academically and graduated high school in 1945 at the top of her class. She attended Antioch College in Ohio and after graduation, attended The New England Conservatory where she met and fell in love with Martin Luther King, Jr.
The two were married in a ceremony officiated by King’s father on the lawn of her parents’ home on June 18, 1953. They moved to Montgomery, Alabama in September of 1954 after her husband was named pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. The couple had four children: Yolanda Denise, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott and Bernice Albertine. All of the children became civil rights activists, following in the important footsteps of their famous parents.
Over the years, Coretta remained active both in preserving the memory of her late husband and in significant political issues. She fought for years to make her husband’s birthday, January 15, a national holiday, an achievement that was finally realized in 1986. During the 1980s Coretta Scott King took a stand against apartheid and in 1986 visited South Africa and met with Winnie Mandela while her husband, Nelson, was still a political prisoner. Upon her return to the United States, she urged President Reagan to approve sanctions against South Africa. She also opposed capital punishment and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Coretta Scott King was a brave and proud women who stood up for her beliefs and tried to make the world a better place for all human kind. Her achievements could fill many pages, but suffice it to say that a queen among women has passed on and we, left in her shadow, are all better off for her having been here.