North East Digital Village
VILLAGE >IN MEMORY OF
In Memory of Coretta Scott King
Born:April 27, 1927
Deceased: January 30, 2006 at age 78
Coretta Scott King, who had suffered a stroke and a mild heart attack in August 2005, died while seeking treatment in Mexico. Coretta Scott King was born April 27, 1927, in Heiberger, near Marion, Alabama. She spent her childhood on her parents' farm in Heiberger. Coretta Scott King graduated from Lincoln High School, a private black institution with an integrated faculty. Since Lincoln was nine miles away, her mother hired a bus and drove all the black students in the area to and from school - an unusual action for a black woman in the 1930s.
Coretta Scott King graduated from Lincoln High School, a private black institution with an integrated faculty, then attended and graduated from Antioch College in Ohio in 1949. While in college, she joined the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Young Progressives. She attended the Progressive Party convention in 1948 as a student delegate.
Scott won a grant from the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation that enabled her to enroll at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music in 1951 for a Bachelor of Music degree in voice. It was here, in Boston, that she met Martin Luther King, Jr., who was a doctoral candidate at Boston University's School of Theology. Despite the initial objections of King's parents, the two were married at the Scott family home near Marion on 18 June 1953.
After Martin Luther King's death, Coretta Scott King became a forceful public figure and an important leader in the civil rights movement. She gave hundreds of speeches around the world and was active in such organizations as the National Council of Negro women and the Women's Strike for Peace. She worked for the recognition of Martin Luther King's accomplishments and the establishment of his birthday as MLK Day - a national holiday. She was the founding president of the The Words of Martin Luther King Jr. (1983), and her autobiography, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr. (1969). In recent years, she spoke out against racial profiling, mandatory minimum sentences, gay rights, AIDS research and attacks on affirmative action.
News Stories and Biographical Information
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- Ebony, January 1980; August 1982; January 1986; January 1987; January 1990; January 1991.
- Henry, Sondra, and Emily Taitz, Coretta Scott King: Keeper of the Dream, Enslow, 1992.
- Jet, May 8, 1989; January 21, 1991.
- King, Coretta Scott, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr., Holt, 1969; rev. ed., Henry Holt, 1993.
- Medearis, Angela Shelf, Dare to Dream: Coretta Scott King and the Civil Rights Movement, Lodestar Books, 1994.
- Patrick, Diane, Coretta Scott King, Franklin Watts, 1991.
- Rhodes, Lisa Renee, Coretta Scott King, Chelsea House, 1997.
- Schraff, Anne, Coretta Scott King: Striving for Civil Rights, Enslow, 1997. Turk, Ruth, Coretta Scott King: Fighter for Justice, Branden Publishing, 1997.
- Vivian, Octavia, Coretta: The Story of Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr., Fortress, 1970.
- Clayborne Carson , Ralph Luker & Penny Russell, eds. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Volume I: Called to Serve, January 1929 - June 1951, (University of California Press, 1992)
- Clayborne Carson , ed. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Warner Books, 1998)
VILLAGE >IN MEMORY OF
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