By: BHS Features Staff
March 8, 2023
Coretta Scott King was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader who was married to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She always used her voice to bring change, not only for civil rights but for women’s rights, too.
Coretta Scott King was born in Heiberger, Alabama, on April 27, 1927. She was the third of four children. She attended a one-room elementary school located five miles away from her home. She later attended Lincoln Normal School, which despite being nine miles from their home was the closest black high school in Marion, Alabama, due to racial segregation in schools. She graduated valedictorian from Lincoln Normal School in 1945, where she also played the trumpet and piano, sang in the chorus, and participated in school musicals.
After high school, Scott enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Later, she transferred from Antioch when she won a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. This is where she met her later husband Martin Luther King, Jr. Two weeks after meeting Scott, King wrote to his mother that he had met his wife. In August of 1952, Scott met King’s parents Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. On June 18, 1953, Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King, Jr. married.
The Kings welcomed their first child Yolanda on November 17, 1955.
Mrs. Scott King has always been known for her activism, but it was not until she met her husband when things really started to take off for her. On February 23, 1958, she took her first active role in advocating for civil rights. On April 25, she made her first appearance at a concert that year at Peter High School Auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama.The concert was important for her as a way to continue her professional career and to participate in movements all over. As she advocated for women and civil rights, concerts gave the audience “an emotional connection to the messages of social, economic, and spiritual transformation”. She went on to do hundreds of moments, concerts, and peaceful protests.
But life came to a complete standstill on April 4, 1968, when her husband Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and killed in Memphis Tennessee. Mrs. Scott King did not let this stop her from advocating. On April 8, 1968, she and her children headed a march with sanitation workers that her husband had planned to carry out before his death. Not very long after the assassination, she took his place at a peace rally in New York City. Using notes he had written before his death, she constructed her own speech.
Mrs. Scott King eventually aimed to include women’s rights, economic issues, world peace, and various other causes. As early as December 1968, she called for women to “unite and form a solid block of women power to fight the three great evils of racism, poverty and war”.
On January 30, 2006, Mrs Scott King passed away at a rehabilitation center in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, in the Oasis Hospital where she was undergoing holistic therapy for her stroke and advanced-stage ovarian cancer.
Her one goal in life was to create peace for all and to inspire people to do what’s right. She is an inspiration to all but especially a role model for women and girls all over the world. She taught to always fight for what you believe in and to settle for nothing less.
{Information for this article can be located on History.com and Wikipedia.com.}
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